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ECLECTIC ENGLISH CLASSICS 

AN INLAND VOYAGE 

AND 

TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

BY 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 



EDITED BY 

ROBERT ALLEN ARMSTRONG 

HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 
WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY 



AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 

NEW YORK CINCINNATI CHICAGO 



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Copyright, 191 3, by 
American Book Company 

Stevenson's inland voyage, etc. 

w. p. I 



©CI.A847863 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Introduction , . 5 

AN INLAND VOYAGE 

Preface to First Edition 11 

Dedication 13 

]\Iap 14 

Antwerp to Boom 15 

On the Willebroek Canal 19 

The Royal Sport Nautiquc 23 

At Maubeuge 28 

On the Sambre Canalized: To Quartes 32 

Pont-sur-Sambre: We are Peddlers 37 

The Traveling Merchant 42 

On the Sambre Canahzed: To Landrecies 46 

At Landrecies 50 

Sambre and Oise Canal: Canal Boats 54 

The Oise in Flood 58 

Origny Sainte-Benoite: A By-day 65 

The Company at Table 70 

Down the Oise: To Moy 76 

La Fere of Cursed Memory 80 

Down the Oise: Through the Golden Valley 85 

Noyon Cathedral 87 

Down the Oise: To Compiegne 91 

At Compiegne 93 

Changed Times 97 

Down the Oise: Church Interiors 102 

Precy and the Marionettes ; . . . 107 

Back to the World 116 

3 



4 CONTENTS 

TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

PAGE 

Dedication iiQ 

Map • I20 

Velay 

The Donkey, the Pack, and the Packsaddle 121 

The Green Donkey Driver 126 

I have a Goad ^34 

Upper Gevaudan 

A Camp in the Dark 140 

Cheylard and Luc 150 

Our Lady of the Snows 

Father ApolUnaris ^53 

The Monks 158 

The Boarders 165 

Upper Gevaudan {Continued) 

Across the Goulet , , . . . 171 

A Night among the Pines i74 

The Country of the Camisards 

Across the Lozere ^79 

Pont de Montvert 184 

In the Valley of the Tarn iQO 

Florae ^99 

In the Valley of the Mimente 201 

The Heart of the Country 205 

The Last Day 212 

Farewell, Modestine 217 

Suggestions for Study and Notes 219 



INTRODUCTION 

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Novem- 
ber 13, 1850. On both sides of his family he was descended 
from capable and cultivated people. His mother was Margaret 
Balfour, daughter of Lewis Balfour, minister of the parish of Col- 
inton and son of James Balfour, a professor in the University of 
Edinburgh. His father, Thomas Stevenson, was a member of a 
family of distinguished lighthouse engineers, and was a man of 
vigorous personality, fond of books, and a prolific writer on sub- 
jects relating to his chosen work. Robert Louis inherited from 
him force of intellect, persistence, and a spirit of independence, 
and from his mother that alertness, vivacity, optimism, and joy 
in life that made him a man of winning personality and a writer 
of decided charm. 

His childhood was passed under the shadow of ill health. He 
suffered from frequent bronchial affections and from acute 
nervous excitability, and was often ill for months at a time. 
But the days when he was kept indoors were not unhappy. 
His mind was active, his imagination furnishing for him a world 
of fancy which he enjoyed to the full. His poem, ''The Land of 
Counterpane," gives a vivid picture of the invalid boy and 
shows that this land was to him a country of delight. In the 
summer he had such respite from sickness as to permit of fre- 
quent visits to his Grandfather Balfour's in Colinton, a town 
near Edinburgh. Here he met his numerous cousins and en- 
joyed with them games of athletic skill and of imaginative in- 
vention. In all their sports he was the leader. 

He attended several elementary and secondary schools near 
his home in Edinburgh, but because of frequent fits of illness 
was unable to pursue his studies except in the most desultory 
manner. At seventeen he entered the University of Edinburgh 
to prepare himself to take up the family profession of engineer- 
ing. He had little strength or inclination for hard or systematic 
study, and no liking for the subjects which he must pursue in 



6 INTRODUCTION 

preparation for the work of an engineer. He did enjoy the con- 
struction work in which he took part as an apprentice, in his 
summer vacations, but only because it gave him a taste of the 
joy of outdoor Kfe. 

According to his own account he was an incorrigible idler. 
This is true as regards the regular tasks that were set for him; 
but outside of school and college his interest was eager and his 
curiosity insatiable. He read precociously and widely, and in his 
wanderings about Edinburgh, where his early years were spent, 
and in his travels in search of health, his eyes stored up much 
which passed into literature in after days. He was most diligent 
in a great task that he had set for himself — that of learning 
to write. In training himself in this art he endured drudgery 
which he did not have the patience to undergo in the stated 
work of the University. He says of himself: 

''All through my boyhood and youth I was known and pointed 
out for the pattern of an idler; and yet I was always busy on 
my own private end, which was to learn to write. I always 
kept two books in my pocket, one to read, and one to write in. 
As I walked, my mind was busy fitting what I saw with appro- 
priate words. ... I lived with words, and what I thus wrote 
was for no ulterior use; it was written consciously for practice. 
It was not so much that I wished to be an author (though I 
wished that too) as that I would learn to write." 

Although Stevenson had shown enough interest and aptitude 
in the work of engineering to win, in 1871, the silver medal of 
the Edinburgh Society of Art for a scientific paper on a suggested 
improvement in lighthouse apparatus, he besought his father 
to consent to his abandoning engineering for his favorite pursuit, 
literature. Reluctantly his father consented, with the condi- 
tion that Robert Louis should prepare for the profession of law, 
that he might not be wholly dependent upon the precarious 
returns from a Uterary career. Accordingly he took up the study 
of law, and was called to the Scottish bar in Edinburgh in 1875. 
For a while, chiefly to please his parents, he appeared in court 
and practiced to the extent of presenting four briefs; but the 
absence of cUents was no great sorrow to him. 

During his undergraduate days he made frequent excursions 
in Scotland, in England, and on the continent. His main pur- 
pose was to find health, but he had a growing passion for travel. 



INTRODUCTION 7 

At the time of his admission to the bar he had adopted a sort 
of vagrant way of Hfe, and when his father became reconciled 
to his abandonment of a stated profession and gave him an al- 
lowance sufficient, with economy, for all his needs, he renewed 
his journeys to the continent, meeting many artists of kindred 
enthusiasms with himself, and making many warm friends who 
stimulated and inspired him. With this wandering he com- 
bined a steady and growing literary industry. The first fruit 
of this industry was the account of his canoe trip in Belgium 
and France, An Inland Voyage. This excursion was made in 
the summer of 1876 with his friend. Sir Walter Simpson. Two 
years later, he made a walking tour through the Cevennes and 
recorded his experiences and observations in the companion 
volume. Travels with a Donkey. 

His friend, Edmund Gosse, in Critical Kit-Kats, gives a most 
interesting picture of Stevenson as he appeared at this time: 

"A childlike mirth leaped and danced in him; he seemed to 
skip upon the hills of life. He was simply bubbling with quips 
and jests; his inherent earnestness or passion about abstract 
things was incessantly relieved by jocosity; and when he had 
built one of his intellectual castles in the sand, a wave of humor 
was certain to come in and destroy it. . . . Stevenson was not 
without a good deal of innocent oddity in his dress. When I 
try to conjure up his figure, I can see only a slight, lean lad, in a 
suit of black sea-cloth, a black shirt, and a wisp of yellow carpet 
that did duty for a necktie." 

In August, 1879, Stevenson sailed for America. The voyage 
across the Atlantic, which he made as a steerage passenger, and the 
journey across the American continent on an emigrant train fur- 
nished him much literary material. But the object of the long 
journey was a matter more vital to his happiness. Three years be- 
fore, at Grez, in France, he had met and fallen in love with an 
American lady, Mrs. Osborne, whose home was in California. At 
the beginning of 1879, she returned to her home, and Stevenson's 
hurried journey was made to join her. He had declared his 
intention of making her his wife, although his friends advised 
him against such a step, and his father so far disapproved of his 
intention as to withhold his monthly allowance. Stevenson's 
year in California was full of hardships. Poverty, anxiety, and 
hard work brought on a severe ilhiess. It was only through the 



8 INTRODUCTION 

careful nursing of Mrs. Osborne that his life was saved. In 
April his father cabled him an allowance, and in May he married 
Mrs. Osborne. In response to the desire of his father and mother 
he returned to Scotland in August, taking his wife and her two 
children. His father and mother welcomed him at Liverpool 
and were soon fully reconciled to the marriage. 

The remaining fourteen years of Stevenson's life were spent 
in the constant quest of health. During the seven years fol- 
lowing 1880 he resided in many places: at Davos among the 
Alps, in the Highlands, at Marseilles and Hyeres in southern 
France, and at Bournemouth in southern England. Many 
times his life seemed to hang by a thread, but all the time he 
continued his work persistently, bravely, cheerfully. In August, 
1887, three months after his father's death, he sailed for America 
with his wife, his mother, and his stepson, Mr. Lloyd Osborne. 
This was his farewell to Europe. He met with a flattering re- 
ception in New York, and was overwhelmed with orders to 
write for papers and magazines at most liberal rates. The first 
winter he spent at Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks. There his 
health was improved and his literary work advanced. 

In June, 1888, Stevenson hired a yacht and with his family 
sailed from San Francisco, seeking health in the South Seas. 
For three years he traveled up and down the Pacific, touching 
at various places and making longer stops at the Samoan Islands, 
the Gilbert Islands, Tahiti, and the Hawaiian Islands. He 
never again left the waters of the Pacific. In November, 1890, 
he returned to Samoa, where the last four years of his life were 
spent. At Vailima, on the island of Upolu, Samoa, he built a 
large and comfortal3le house, where he lived, with his wife, his 
mother, and numerous kinsfolk and visiting friends. It pleased 
him to gather about him "a kind of feudal clan of servants and 
retainers" and to reconstruct something of the life of a High- 
land chief. He was sympathetic with the natives in the troublous 
condition of their affairS, and stood their champion in their dis- 
putes with Germany, the United States, and England. He be- 
came indeed a powerful and benignant island chief, and in return 
for his unselfish services the natives gave him their confidence 
and love. Because of renewed health and strength his literary 
industry was more vigorous than ever, and he produced here 
some of his best work. 



INTRODUCTION g 

Stevenson died suddenly on December 3, in 1894. He was 
buried on the top of Mt. Vaea, a romantic site of his own selec- 
tion. With touching lamentations, sixty of the sturdy natives 
bore him to his last resting place. 

Now that his life was finished, its perpetual paradox became 
apparent. All his years he was fighting a losing battle against 
mortal sickness, yet he did the work of a strong man; in constant 
weakness and illness he had nevertheless an amazing vitality; 
and facing death he wrote books full of the joyousness of living. 

Permeated with the robust spirit of youth yet softened by 
a sympathy born of suffering, his works make an especial appeal 
to boys and girls. Everywhere in his writings we see evidence 
of the eternal boy in him. Barrie says, "He was the spirit of 
Boyhood tugging at that weary old world of ours and compelling 
it to come back and play." He never outgrew the child's de- 
light in make-believe; so we should expect him to be a roman- 
ticist always. In fact his Hterary gospel was that romance, or 
the vision of the possibilities of things, is far more important 
than mere actual occurrences. He said that " to travel hopefully 
is better than to arrive, and the true success is to labor." No- 
where is his philosophy of hope — the essence of his youthful- 
ness — more strikingly expressed than in his ''Requiem," now 
inscribed on his own tomb : 

"Under the wide and starry sky, 
Dig the grave and let me lie. 
Glad did I live and gladly die. 
And I laid me down with a will. 

This be the verse you grave for me: 
Here he lies where he longed to be; 
Home is the sailor, home from the sea 
And the hunter home from the hill.^' 



CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE CHIEF WRITINGS OF 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

1876 Virginibus Puerisque, Part I. (Cornhill Magazine). 

1877 A Lodging for the Night (Temple Bar). 

1878 An Inland Voyage. 

1879 Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes. 

1 88 1 Virginibus Puerisque. 

1882 Familiar Studies of Men and Books, New Arabian Nights. 

1883 The Silverado Squatters, Treasure Island. 

1 88 5 A Child's Garden of Verses, Prince Otto. 

1 886 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Flyde, Kidnapped. 

1887 Underwoods, The Merry Men and Other Tales, Memories and 

Portraits. 

1889 The Master of Ballantrae. 

1892 Across the Plains, Weir of Hermiston (Begun). 

1893 Catriona (David Balfour). 

1894 The Ebb Tide. 

1895 The Vailima Letters. 

1896 Weir of Hermiston. 

1899 St. Ives (final chapters by Quiller-Couch). 



10 



PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION 

To equip so small a book with a preface is, I am half afraid, to sin 
against proportion. But a preface is more than an author can resist, 
for it is the reward of his labors. When the foundation stone is laid, 
the architect appears with his plans, and struts for an hour before the 
public eye. So with the writer in his preface: he may have never a 
word to say, but he must show himself for a moment in the portico, 
hat in hand, and with an urbane demeanor. 

It is best, in such circumstances, to represent a delicate shade of 
manner between humility and superiority: as if the book had been 
written by some one else, and you had merely run over it and inserted 
what was good. But for my part I have not yet learned the trick to 
that perfection; I am not yet able to dissemble the warmth of my 
sentiments towards a reader; and if I meet him on the threshold, it is 
to invite him in with country cordiality. 

To say truth,"- 1 had no sooner finished reading this little book in 
proof, than I was seized upon by a distressing apprehension. It oc- 
curred to me that I might not only be the first to read these pages, but 
the last as well; that I might have pioneered this very smiling tract of 
country all in vain, and find not a soul to follow in my steps. The 
more I thought, the more I disliked the notion; until the distaste grew 
into a sort of panic terror, and I rushed into this Preface, which is no 
more than an advertisement for readers. 

What am I to say for my book? Caleb and Joshua " brought back 
from Palestine a formidable bunch of grapes; alas! my book produces 
naught so nourishing; and for the matter of that, we live in an age 
when people prefer a definition to any quantity of fruit. 

I wonder, would a negative be found enticing? for, from the nega- 
tive point of view, I flatter myself this volume has a certain stamp. 
Although it runs to considerably upwards of two hundred pages, it 
contains not a single reference to the imbecility of God's universe, 
nor so much as a single hint that I could have made a better one 
myself, — I really do not know where my head can have been. I seem 
A superior n indicates a note at the end of the volume. 
II 



12 PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION 

to have forgotten all that makes it glorious to be man. — 'Tis an 
omission that renders the book philosophically unimportant; but I 
am in hopes the eccentricity may please in frivolous circles. 

To the friend who accompanied me, I owe many thanks already, 
indeed I wish I owed him nothing else; but at this moment I feel 
towards him an almost exaggerated tenderness. He, at least, will be- 
come my reader: — if it were only to follow his own travels alongside 
of mine. 

R. L. S. 



TO 
SIR WALTER GRINDLAY SIMPSON, BART.« 

My dear Cigarette,'^ 

It was enough that you should have shared so Hberally in the rains 
and portages of our voyage; that you should have had so hard a 
battle to recover the derelict Arethusa"' on the flooded Oise; and 
that you should thenceforth have piloted a mere wreck of mankind 
to Origny Sainte-Benoite and a supper so eagerly desired. It was 
perhaps more than enough, as you once somewhat piteously com- 
plained, that I should have set down all the strong language to you, 
and kept the appropriate reflections for myself. I could not in decency 
expose you to share the disgrace of another and more public shipwreck. 
But now that this voyage of ours is going into a cheap edition, that 
peril, we shall hope, is at an end, and I may put your name on the 
burgee.^ 

But I cannot pause till I have lamented the fate of our two ships. 
That, sir, was not a fortunate day when we projected the possession 
of a canal barge; " it was not a fortunate day when we shared our day- 
dream with the most hopeful of daydreamers. For a while, indeed, 
the world looked smilingly. The barge was procured and christened, 
and as the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne,"' lay for some months, 
the admired of all admirers, in a pleasant river and under the walls of 
an ancient town. M. Mattras, the accompHshed carpenter of Moret, 
had made her a center of emulous labor; and you will not have for- 
gotten the amount of sweet champagne consumed in the inn at the 
bridge end, to give zeal to the workmen and speed to the work. On 
the financial aspect, I would not willingly dwell. The Eleven Thousand 
Virgins of Cologne rotted in the stream where she was beautified. She 
felt not the impulse of the breeze; she was never harnessed to the 
patient track horse. And when at length she was sold, by the indig- 
nant carpenter of Moret, there were sold along with her the Arethusa 
and the Cigarette, she of cedar, she, as we knew so keenly on a portage, 
of solid-hearted English oak. Now these historic vessels fly the tri- 
color 2 and are known by new and ahen names. 

R. L. S. 
^ A swallow-tailed pennant used by yachts and merchant vessels. 
2 The red, white, and blue of France. 

13 




Precy„ 



Pontoise 
Versailles" ^ 



Fontiinebleau 



^t' Com piegiie^ 

/O^Pont Sainte Jttaxence 
''Creil 

L'Isle Adam 



i Rheims 



i^h^lons 

sur-Marne 



Map to illustrate 
AN INLAND VOYAGE 

BY 
Robert Louis Stevenson 

SCALF OF MILFS 

> 10 20 . 30 40 50 



14 



AN INLAND VOYAGE 

ANTWERP TO BOOM 

WE made a great stir in Antwerp Docks. A stevedore and 
a lot of dock porters took up the two canoes, and ran with 
them for the slip. A crowd of children followed, cheering. The 
Cigarette went off in a splash and a bubble of small breaking 
water. Next moment the Arethusa was after her. A steamer 
was coming down, men on the paddle box shouted hoarse warn- 
ings, the stevedore and his porters were bawling from the quay. 
But in a stroke or two the canoes were away out in the middle of 
the Scheldt, and all steamers, and stevedores, and other 'long- 
shore vanities were left behind. 

The sun shone brightly; the tide was making — four jolly 
miles an hour; the wind blew steadily, with occasional squalls. 
For my part, I had never been in a canoe under sail in my life; 
and my first experiment out in the middle of this big river, was 
not made without some trepidation. What would happen when 
the wind first caught my little canvas? I suppose it was almost 
as trying a venture into the regions of the unknown, as to pub- 
lish a first book, or to marry. But my doubts were not of long 
duration; and in five minutes you will not be surprised to learn 
that I had tied my sheet."^ 

I own I was a little struck by this circumstance myself; of 
course, in company with the rest of my fellow men, I had always 
tied the sheet in a sailing boat; but in so little and crank a con- 
cern as a canoe, and with these charging squalls, I was not pre- 
pared to find myself follow the same principle; and it inspired 
me with some contemptuous views of our regard for life. It is 
certainly easier to smoke with the sheet fastened; but I had never 

15 



l6 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

before weighed a comfortable pipe of tobacco against an obvious 
risk, and gravely elected for the comfortable pipe. It is a com- 
monplace, that we cannot answer for ourselves before we have 
been tried. But it is not so common a reflection, and surely 
more consoling, that we usually find ourselves a great deal 
braver and better than we thought. I believe this is every one's 
experience: but an apprehension that they may belie themselves 
in the future prevents mankind from trumpeting this cheerful 
sentiment abroad. I wish sincerely, for it would have saved me 
much trouble, there had been some one to put me in a good 
heart about life when I was younger; to tell me how dangers are 
most portentous on a distant sight; and how the good in a man's 
spirit will not suffer itself to be overlaid, and rarely or never 
deserts him in the hour of need. But we are all for tootling on 
the sentimental flute in literature; and not a man among us will 
go to the head of the march to sound the heady ^ drums. 

It was agreeable upon the river. A barge or two went past 
laden with hay. Reeds and willows bordered the stream; and 
cattle and gray venerable horses came and hung their mild 
heads over the embankment. Here and there was a pleasant 
village among trees, with a noisy shipping yard; here and there 
a villa in a lawn. The wind served us well up the Scheldt and 
thereafter up the Rupel ; and we were running pretty free when 
we began to sight the brickyards of Boom, lying for a long way 
on the right bank of the river. The left bank was still green and 
pastoral, with alleys of trees along the embankment, and here 
and there a flight of steps to serve a ferry, where perhaps there 
sat a woman with her elbows on her knees, or an old gentleman 
with a staff and silver spectacles. But Boom and its brickyards 
grew smokier and shabbier with every minute; until a great 
church with a clock and a wooden bridge over the river, in- 
dicated the central quarters of the town. 

Boom is not a nice place, and is only remarkable for one thing: 
1 Stirring, stimulating. 



ANTWERP TO BOOM 17 

that the majority of the inhabitants have a private opinion that 
they can speak English, which is not justified by fact. This gave 
a kind of haziness to our intercourse. As for the Hotel de la 
Navigation, I think it is the worst feature of the place. It boasts 
of a sanded parlor, with a bar at one end, looking on the street; 
and another sanded parlor, darker and colder, with an empty 
bird cage and a tricolor subscription box by way of sole adorn- 
ment, where we made shift to dine in the company of three un- 
communicative engineer apprentices and a silent bagman.^ The 
food, as usual in Belgium, was of a nondescript occasional 
character; indeed, I have never been able to detect anything in 
the nature of a meal among this pleasing people; they seem to 
peck and trifle with viands all day long in an amateur spirit: 
tentatively French, truly German, and somehow falling between 
the two. 

The empty bird cage, swept and garnished,^^ and with no trace 
of the old piping favorite, save where two wires had been pushed 
apart to hold its lump of sugar, carried with it a sort of grave- 
yard cheer. The engineer apprentices would have nothing to 
say to us, nor indeed to the bagman; but talked low and sparingly 
to one another, or raked^ us in the gaslight with a gleam of spec- 
tacles. For though handsome lads, they were all (in the Scotch 
phrase) barnacled." 

There was an English maid in the hotel, who had been long 
enough out of England to pick up all sorts of funny foreign 
idioms, and all sorts of curious foreign ways, which need not 
here be specified. She spoke to us very fluently in her jargon, 
asked us information as to the manners of the present day in 
England, and obligingly corrected us when we attempted to 
answer. But as we were dealing with a woman, perhaps our 
information was not so much thrown away as it appeared. The 

1 A commercial traveler. 

2 A naval term meaning to fire along the length of a vessel, so as to do the 
greatest possible damage. 



l8 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

sex likes to pick up knowledge and yet preserve its superiority. 
It is good policy, and almost necessary in the circumstances. If 
a man finds a woman admire him, were it only for his acquaint- 
ance with geography, he will begin at once to build upon the 
admiration. It is only by unintermittent snubbing that the 
pretty ones can keep us in our place. Men, as Miss Howe or 
Miss Harlowe" would have said, "are such encro ackers.''^ For 
my part, I am body and soul with the women; and after a well- 
married couple, there is nothing so beautiful in the world as the 
myth of the divine huntress." It is no use for a man to take to 
the woods; we know him; Anthony" tried the same thing long 
ago, and had a pitiful time of it by all accounts. But there is this 
about some women, which overtops the best gymnosophist ^ 
among men, that they suffice to themselves, and can walk in a 
high and cold zone v/ithout the countenance of any trousered 
being. I declare, although the reverse of a professed ascetic, I 
am more obliged to women for this ideal than I should be to the 
majority of them, or indeed to any but one, for a spontaneous 
kiss. There is nothing so encouraging as this spectacle of self- 
sufficiency. And when I think of the slim and lovely maidens, 
running the woods all night to the note of Diana's horn; moving 
among the old oaks, as fancy-free as they; things of the forest 
and the starlight, not touched by the commotion of man's hot 
and turbid life — although there are plenty other ideals that I 
should prefer — I find my heart beat at the thought of this one. 
'Tis to fail in life, but to fail with what a grace! That is not 
lost which is not regretted. And where — here slips out the 
male — where would be much of the glory of inspiring love, if 
there were no contempt to overcome? 

^ One of a sect of ancient Hindu philosophers who renounced all pleasures 
and devoted themselves to mystical thought. 



ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 19 



ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 

NEXT morning, when we set forth on the Willebroek Canal, 
the rain began heavy and chill. The water of the canal 
stood at about the drinking temperature of tea; and under this 
cold aspersion the surface was covered with steam. The exhila- 
ration of departure, and the easy motion of the boats under each 
stroke of the paddles, supported us through this misfortune 
while it lasted; and when the cloud passed and the sun came out 
again, our spirits went up above the range of stay-at-home 
humors. A good breeze rustled and shivered in the rows of 
trees that bordered the canal. The leaves flickered in and out 
of the light in tumultuous masses. It seemed sailing weather to 
eye and ear; but down between the banks the wind reached us 
only in faint and desultory puffs. There was hardly enough to 
steer by. Progress was intermittent and unsatisfactory. A 
jocular person, of marine antecedents, hailed us from the tow- 
path with a "C'est vite, mais c'est longJ^ ^ 

The canal was busy enough. Every now and then we met or 
overtook a long string of boats, with great green tillers; high 
sterns with a window on either side of the rudder, and perhaps a 
jug or a flowerpot in one of the windows; a dinghy^ following 
behind; a woman busied about the day's dinner, and a handful 
of children. These barges were all tied one behind the other with 
towropes, to the number of twenty-five or thirty; and the line 
w^as headed and kept in motion by a steamer of strange con- 
struction. It had neither paddle wheel nor screw; but by some 
gear not rightly comprehensible to the unmechanical mind, it 
fetched up over its bow a small bright chain which lay along the 
bottom of the canal, and paying it out again over the stern, 
dragged itself forward, link by link, with its whole retinue of 

1 "You are going rapidly, but the journey is long." ^ h. small boat. 



20 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

loaded scows. Until one had found out the key to the enigma, 
there was something solemn and uncomfortable in the progress 
of one of these trains, as it moved gently along the water with 
nothing to mark its advance but an eddy alongside dying away 
into the wake. 

Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise, a canal barge is 
by far the most delightful to consider. It may spread its sails, 
and then you see it sailing high above the tree tops and the 
windmill, sailing on the aqueduct, sailing through the green 
cornlands: the most picturesque of things amphibious. Or the 
horse plods along at a footpace as if there were no such thing as 
business in the world; and the man dreaming at the tiller sees 
the same spire on the horizon all day long. It is a mystery how 
things ever get to their destination at this rate; and to see the 
barges waiting their turn at a lock, affords a fine lesson of how 
easily the world may be taken. There should be many contented 
spirits on board, for such a life is both to travel and to stay at 
home. 

The chimney smokes for dinner as you go along; the banks of 
the canal slowly unroll their scenery to contemplative eyes; the 
barge floats by great forests and through great cities with their 
public buildings and their lamps at night; and for the bargee, in 
his floating home, "traveling abed," it is merely as if he were 
listening to another man's story or turning the leaves of a picture 
book in which he had no concern. He may take his afternoon 
walk in some foreign country on the banks of the canal, and then 
come home to dinner at his own fireside. 

There is not enough exercise in such a life for any high measure 
of health; but a high measure of health is only necessary for 
unhealthy people. The slug of a fellow, who is never ill nor well, 
has a quiet time of it in life, and dies all the easier. 

I am sure I would rather be a bargee than occupy any position 
under Heaven that required attendance at an office. There are 
few callings, I should say, where a man gives up less of his 



ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 21 

liberty in return for regular meals. The bargee is on shipboard 
— he is master in his own ship — he can land whenever he will — 
he can never be kept beating off a lee shore" a whole frosty night 
when the sheets are as hard as iron; and so far as I can make out, 
time stands as nearly still with him as is compatible with the 
return of bedtime or the dinner hour. It is not easy to see why 
a bargee should ever die. 

Halfway between Willebroek and Villevorde, in a beautiful 
reach of canal like a squire's avenue,'^ we went ashore to lunch. 
There were two eggs, a junk of bread, and a bottle of wine on 
board the Arethusa; and two eggs and an Etna cooking ap- 
paratus " on board the Cigarette. The master of the latter boat 
smashed one of the eggs in the course of disembarkation; but 
observing pleasantly that it might still be cooked d la papier,^ 
he dropped it into the Etna, in its covering of Flemish ^ news- 
paper. We landed in a blink of fine WTather; but we had not 
been two minutes ashore, before the wind freshened into half 
a gale, and the rain began to patter on our shoulders. We sat 
as close about the Etna as we could. The spirits burned with 
great ostentation; the grass caught flame every minute or two, 
and had to be trodden out; and before long there were several 
burnt fingers of the party. But the solid quantity of cookery 
accomplished was out of proportion with so much display; and 
when we desisted, after two applications of the fire, the sound 
egg was little more than loo-w^arm; ^ and as for d la papier, it 
was a cold and sordid fricassee of printer's ink and broken egg- 
shell. We made shift to roast the other two, by putting them 
close to the burning spirits; and that with better success. And 
then we imcorked the bottle of wine, and sat down in a ditch 
with our canoe aprons " over our knees. It rained smartly. 
Discomfort, when it is honestly uncomfortable and makes no 
nauseous pretensions to the contrary, is a vastly humorous 
business; and people well steeped and stupefied in the open air, 

^ In paper. 2 Pertaining to Flanders. ^ An old form of lukewarm. 



22 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

are in a good vein for laughter. From this point of view, even 
egg a la papier, offered by way of food, may pass muster as a 
sort of accessory to the fun. But this manner of jest, although 
it may be taken in good part, does not invite repetition; and from 
that time forward, the Etna voyaged like a gentleman in the 
locker of the Cigarette. 

It is almost unnecessary to mention that when lunch was over 
and we got aboard again and made sail, the wind promptly died 
away. The rest of the journey to Villevorde, we still spread our 
canvas to the unfavoring air; and with now and then a puff, and 
now and then a spell of paddling, drifted along from lock to lock, 
between the orderly trees. 

It was a fine, green, fat landscape; or rather a mere green 
water lane, going on from village to village. Things had a 
settled look, as in places long lived in. Crop-headed children 
spat upon us from the bridges as we went below, with a true 
conservative feeling. But even more conservative were the 
fishermen, intent upon their floats, who let us go by without one 
glance. They perched upon sterlings ^ and buttresses and along 
the slope of the embankment, gently occupied. They were in- 
different, like pieces of dead nature. They did not move any 
more than if they had been fishing in an old Dutch print. The 
leaves fluttered, the water lapped, but they continued in one 
stay like so many churches established by law. You might have 
trepanned ^ every one of their innocent heads, and found no 
more than so much coiled fishing line below their skulls. I do 
not care for your stalwart fellows in India-rubber stockings 
breasting up mountain torrents with a salmon rod; but I do 
dearly love the class of man who plies his unfruitful art, for ever 
and a day, by still and depopulated waters. 

At the last lock, just beyond Villevorde, there was a lock mis- 

^ Piles driven close together to protect a bridge or a dock from the wash of 
the water. 

2 To trepan is to remove a piece from the skull in a surgical operation. 



THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 23 

tress who spoke French comprehensibly, and told us we were 
still a couple of leagues from Brussels. At the same place the 
rain began again. It fell in straight, parallel lines; and the sur- 
face of the canal was thrown up into an infinity of little crystal 
fountains. There were no beds to be had in the neighborhood. 
Nothing for it but to lay the sails aside and address ourselves to 
steady paddling in the rain. 

Beautiful country houses, with clocks and long lines of 
shuttered windows, and fine old trees standing in groves and 
avenues, gave a rich and somber aspect in the rain and the deep- 
ening dusk to the shores of the canal. I seem to have seen 
something of the same effect in engravings: opulent landscapes, 
deserted and overhung with the passage of storm. . And through- 
out we had the escort of a hooded cart, which trotted shabbily 
along the towpath, and kept at an almost uniform distance in 
our wake. 

THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 

THE rain took off near Laeken. But the sun was already 
down; the air was chill; and we had scarcely a dry stitch 
between the pair of us. Nay, now we found ourselves near the 
end of the Allee Verte," and on the very threshold of Brussels we 
were confronted by a serious difl&culty. The shores were closely 
lined by canal boats waiting their turn at the lock. Nowhere 
was there any convenient landing place; nowhere so much as a 
stable yard to leave the canoes in for the night. We scrambled 
ashore and entered an estaminet ^ where some sorry ^ fellows 
were drinking with the landlord. The landlord was pretty 
round ^ with us; he knew of no coach house or stable yard, 
nothing of the sort; and seeing we had come with no mind to 
drink, he did not conceal his impatience to be rid of us. One of 

1 A coffeehouse and smoking room. 2 Wretched looking. 

3 Short-spoken, severe. 



24 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

the sorry fellows came to the rescue. Somewhere in the corner 
of the basin there was a slip, he informed us, and something else 
besides, not very clearly defined by him, but hopefully construed 
by his hearers. 

Sure enough there was the slip in the corner of the basin; and 
at the top of it two nice-looking lads in boating clothes. The 
Arethusa addressed himself to these. One of them said there 
would be no difficulty about a night's lodging for our boats; and 
the other, taking a cigarette from his lips, inquired if they were 
made by Searle & Son. The name was quite an introduction. 
Half a dozen other young men came out of the boathouse, 
bearing the superscription Royal Sport Nautique, and joined 
in the talk. They were all very polite, voluble, and enthusiastic; 
and their discourse was interlarded with English boating terms 
and the names of English boat builders and English clubs. I do 
not know, to my shame, any spot in my native land where I 
should have been so warmly received by the same number of 
people. We were English boating men, and the Belgian boating 
men fell upon our necks..^ I wonder if French Huguenots'^ 
were as cordially greeted by English Protestants when they 
came across the Channel out of great tribulation. But after 
all, what religion knits people so closely as a common sport ? 

The canoes were carried into the boathouse; they were washed 
down for us by the, club servants, the sails were hung out to 
dry, ^nd everything m«.v'e as snug and tidy as a picture. And in 
the 1.1. 'Mle we were led upstairs by our new-found brethren, 
for so mo . han one of them stated the relationship, and made 
free of their lavatory. This one lent us soap, that one a towel, 
a third and fourlh helped us to undo our bags. And all the time 
such questions, such assurances of respect and sympathy! I 
declare I never knew what glory was before. 

"Yes, yes, the Royal Sport Nautique is the oldest club in 
Belgium." 

"We number two hundred." 



THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 2$ 

"We" — this is not a substantive speech, but an abstract of 
many speeches, the impression left upon my mind after a great 
deal of talk; and very youthful, pleasant, natural, and patriotic 
it seems to me to be — "We have gained all races, except those 
where we were cheated by the French." 

"You must leave all your wet things to be dried." 
"O! entre freres I ^ In any boathouse in England we should 
find the same." (I cordially hope they might.) 

"En Angleterre, vous employez des sliding-seats, ti'est ce pas?" " 
"We are all employed in commerce during the day; but in the 
evening, voyez vous, nous sommes sirieux." ^ 

These were the words. They were all employed over the 
frivolous mercantile concerns of Belgium during the day; but 
in the evening they found some hours for the serious concerns 
of life. I may have a wrong idea of wisdom, but I think that 
was a very wise remark. People connected with literature and 
philosophy are busy all their days in getting rid of secondhand 
notions and false standards. It is thoir profession, in the sweat 
of their brows, by dogged thinkin*^, to recover their old fresh 
view of life, and distinguish what they really and originally like 
from what they have only learned to tolerate perforce. And 
these Royal Nautical Sportsmen had the distinction still quite 
legible in their hearts. They had still those clean perceptions of 
what is nice and nasty, what is interesting and what is duH, 
which envious old gentlemen refer to ksf illusions. The ^3^^^ 
mare illusion of middle age, the bear's hug of custor' f l-'>>&iialiy 
squeezing the life out of a man's soul, had not y( •*J'bfegun for 
these happy-starr'd young Belgians. They still knew that the 
interest they took in their business was a trifling'^affair compared 
to their spontaneous, long-suffering affection for nautical sports. 
To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying amen to 
what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your 

1 "Among brothers." ^ "in England, you use sliding-seats, do you not? " 
3 "You see, we are serious." 



26 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

soul alive. Such a man may be generous; he may be honest in 
something more than the commercial sense; he may love his 
friends with an elective, personal sympathy, and not accept 
them as an adjunct of the station to which he has been called. 
He may be a man, in short, acting on his own instincts, keeping 
in his own shape that God made him in ; and not a mere crank in 
the social engine house, welded on principles that he does not 
understand, and for purposes that he does not care for. 

For will anyone dare to tell me that business is more enter- 
taining than fooling among boats? He must have never seen 
a boat, or never seen an office, who says so. And for certain the 
one is a great deal better for the health. There should be noth- 
ing so much a man's business as his amusements. Nothing but 
moneygrubbing can be put forward to the contrary; no one but 

Mammon," the least erected spirit that fell 
'From Heaven, 

durst risk a word in answer. It is but a lying cant that would 
represent the merchant and the banker as people disinterestedly 
toiling for mankind, and then most useful when they are most 
absorbed in their transactions; for the man is more important 
than his services. And when my Royal Nautical Sportsman 
shall have so far fallen from his hopeful youth that he cannot 
pluck up an enthusiasm over anything but his ledger, I venture 
to doubt whether he will be near so nice a fellow, and whether 
he would welcome, with so good a grace, a couple of drenched 
Englishmen paddling into Brussels in the dusk. 

When we had changed our wet clothes and drunk a glass of 
pale ale to the Club's prosperity, one of their number escorted 
us to an hotel. He would not join us at our dinner, but he had 
no objection to a glass of wine. Enthusiasm is very wearing; 
and I begin to understand why prophets were unpopular " in 
Judea, where they were best known. For three stricken hours 
did this excellent young man sit beside us to dilate on boats and 



THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 27 

boat races; and before he left, he was kind enough to order our 
bedroom candles. 

We endeavored now and again to change the subject; but the 
diversion did not last a moment: the Royal Nautical Sportsman 
bridled, shied, answered the question, and then breasted once 
more into the swelling tide of his subject. I call it his subject; 
but I think it was he who was subjected. The Arethusa, who 
holds all racing as a creature of the devil, found himself in a 
pitiful dilemma. He durst not own his ignorance for the honor 
of Old England, and spoke away •about English clubs and Eng- 
lish oarsmen whose fame had never before come to his ears. 
Several times, and once, above all, on the question of sliding- 
seats, he was within an ace of exposure. As for the Cigarette, 
who has rowed races in the heat of his blood, but now disowns 
these slips of his wanton youth, his case was still more desperate; 
for the Royal Nautical proposed that he should take an oar in 
one of their eights on the morrow, to compare the English with 
the Belgian stroke. I could see my friend perspiring in his 
chair whenever that particular topic came up. And there was 
yet another proposal which had the same effect on both of us. 
It appeared that the champion canoeist of Europe (as well as 
most other champions) was a Royal Nautical Sportsman. And 
if we would only wait until the Sunday, this infernal paddler 
would be so condescending as to accompany us on our next 
stage. Neither of us had the least desire to drive the coursers of 
the sun against Apollo.^ 

When the young man was gone, we countermanded our 
candles, and ordered some brandy and water. The great billows 
had gone over our head." The Royal Nautical Sportsmen were 
as nice young fellows as a man would wish to see, but they were 
a trifle too young and a thought too nautical for us. We began 
to see that we were old and cynical ; we liked ease and the agree- 
able rambling of the human mind about this and the other 
subject; we did not want to disgrace our native land by messing 



28 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

an eight, or toiling pitifully in the wake of the champion canoe- 
ist. In short, we had recourse to flight. It seemed ungrateful, 
but we tried to make that good on a card loaded with sincere 
compliments. And indeed it was no time for scruples; we seemed 
to feel the hot breath of the champion on our necks. 



AT MAUBEUGE 



PARTLY from the terror ive had of our good friends the 
Royal Nauticals, partly from the fact that there were no 
fewer than fifty-five locks between Brussels and Charleroi, we 
concluded that we should travel by train across the frontier, 
boats and all. Fifty-five .locks in a day's journey was pretty 
well tantamount to trudging the whole distance on foot, with 
the canoes upon our shoulders, an object of astonishment to the 
trees on the canal side, and of honest derision to all right-thinking 
children. 

To pass the frontier, even in a train, is a difficult matter for 
the Arethusa. He is, somehow or other, a marked man for the 
official eye. Wherever he journeys, there are the officers 
gathered together.^ Treaties are solemnly signed, foreign min- 
isters, ambassadors, and consuls sit throned in state from China 
to Peru," and the union jack flutters on all the winds of heaven. 
Under these safeguards, portly clergymen, schoolmistresses, 
gentlemen in gray tweed suits, and all the ruck and rabble of 
British touristry pour unhindered, Murray ^ in hand, over the 
railways of the continent, and yet the slim person of the Arethusa 
is taken in the meshes, while these great fish go on their way re- 
joicing. If he travels without a passport, he is cast, without any 
figure about the matter, into noisome dungeons: if his papers are 
in order, he is suffered to go his way indeed, but not until he has 
been humiliated by a general incredulity. He is a born British 
1 A guide book named from its editor and publisher. 



AT MAUBEUGE 29 

subject, yet he has never succeeded in persuading a single offi- 
cial of his nationality. He flatters himself he is indifferent 
honest; yet he is rarely taken for anything better than a spy, 
and there is no absurd and disreputable means of livelihood but 
has been attributed to him in some heat of official or popular 
distrust. . . . 

For the life of me I cannot understand it. I too have been 
knolled to church,'^ and sat at good men's feasts; but I bear no 
mark of it. I am as strange as a Jack Indian to their official 
spectacles. I might come from any part of the globe," it seems, 
except from where I do. My ancestors have labored in vain, and 
the glorious Constitution cannot protect me in my walks abroad. 
It is a great thing, believe me, to present a good normal type of 
the nation you belong to. 

Nobody else was asked for his papers on the way to Maubeuge; 
but I was; and although I clung to my rights, I had to choose at 
last between accepting the humiliation and being left behind by 
the train. I was sorry to give way, but I wanted to get to 
Maubeuge. 

Maubeuge is a fortified town, with a very good inn, the Grand 
Cerf. It seemed to be inhabited principally by soldiers and 
bagmen; at least, these were all that we saw, except the hotel 
servants. We had to stay there some time, for the canoes were 
in no hurry to follow us, and at last stuck hopelessly in the 
customhouse until we went back to liberate them. There was 
nothing to do, nothing to see. We had good meals, which was 
a great matter; but that was all. 

The Cigarette was nearly taken up upon a charge of drawing 
the fortifications: a feat of which he was hopelessly incapable. 
And besides, as I suppose each belligerent nation has a plan of 
the other's fortified places already, these precautions are of the 
nature of shutting the stable door after the steed is away. But 
I have no doubt they help to keep up a good spirit at home. It 
is a great thing if you can persuade people that they are somehow 



30 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

or other partakers in a mystery. It makes them feel bigger. 
Even the Freemasons, who have been shown up to satiety, pre- 
serve a kind of pride; and not a grocer among them, however 
honest, harmless, and empty headed he may feel himself to be 
at bottom, but comes home from one of their coenacula ^ with a 
portentous significance for himself. 

It is an odd thing, how happily two people, if there are two, 
can live in a place where they have no acquaintance. I think 
the spectacle of a whole life in which you have no part paralyzes 
personal desire. You are content to become a mere spectator. 
The baker stands in his door; the colonel with his three medals 
goes by to the cafe at night; the troops drum and trumpet and 
man the ramparts, as bold as so many lions. It would task 
language to say how placidly you behold all this. In a place 
where you have taken some root, you are provoked out of your 
indifference; you have a hand in the game; your friends are 
fighting with the army. But in a strange town, not small enough 
to grow too soon familiar, nor so large as to have laid itself out 
for travelers, you stand so far apart from the business, that you 
positively forget it would be possible to go nearer; you have so 
little human interest around you, that you do not remember 
yourself to be a man. Perhaps, in a very short time, you would 
be one no longer. Gymnosophists go into a wood, with all 
nature seething around them, with romance on every side; it 
would be much more to the purpose, if they took up their abode 
in a dull country town, where they should see just so much of 
humanity as to keep them from desiring more, and only the stale 
externals of man's life. These externals are as dead to us as so 
many formaUties, and speak a dead language in our eyes and 
ears. They have no more meaning than an oath or a salutation. 
We are so much accustomed to see married couples going to 
church of a Sunday that we have clean forgotten what they 
represent; and novelists are driven to rehabilitate adultery, no 
1 Secret meetings. 



AT MAUBEUGE 31 

less, when they wish to show us what a beautiful thing it is for 
a man and a woman to live for each other. 

One person in Maubeuge, however, showed me something 
more than his outside. That was the driver of the hotel omnibus : 
a mean-enough looking little man, as well as I can remember; 
but with a spark of something human in his soul. He had heard 
of our little journey, and came to me at once in envious sym- 
pathy. How he longed to travel! he told me. How he longed 
to be somewhere else, and see the round world before he went 
into the grave ! "Here I am," said he. ''I drive to the station. 
Well. And then I drive back again to the hotel. And so on 
every day and all the week round. My God, is that life?" I 
could not say I thought it was — for him. He pressed me to 
tell him where I had been, and where I hoped to go; and as he 
listened, I declare the fellow sighed. Might not this have been 
a brave African traveler, or gone to the Indies after Drake? ^ 
But it is an evil age for the gypsily inclined among men. He 
who can sit squarest on a three-legged stool," he it is who has 
the wealth and glory. 

I wonder if my friend is still driving the omnibus for the Grand 
Cerf? Not very likely, I believe; for I think he was on the eve 
of mutiny when we passed through, and perhaps our passage 
determined him for good. Better a thousand times that he 
should be a tramp, and mend pots and pans by the wayside, and 
sleep imder trees, and see the dawn and the sunset every day 
above a new horizon. I think I hear you say that it is a respect- 
able position to drive an omnibus? Very well. What right has 
he who likes it not to keep those who would like it dearly out of 
this respectable position? Suppose a dish were not to my taste, 
and you told me that it was a favorite among the rest of the 
company, what should I conclude from that? Not to finish the 
dish against my stomach, I suppose. 

Respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it does not 
rise superior to all considerations. I would not for a moment 



32 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

venture to hint that it was a matter of taste; but I think I will 
go as far as this : that if a position is admittedly unkind, uncom- 
fortable, unnecessary, and superfluously useless, although it 
were as respectable as the Church of England, the sooner a man 
is out of it, the better for himself, and all concerned. 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED: TO QUARTES 

ABOUT three in the afternoon the whole establishment of 
the Grand Cerf accompanied us to the water's edge. The 
man of the omnibus was there with haggard eyes. Poor cage 
bird! Do I not remember the time when I myself haunted the 
station, to watch train after train carry its complement of free- 
men into the night, and read the names of distant places on the 
time bills with indescribable longings? 

We were not clear of the fortifications before the rain began. 
The wind was contrary, and blew in furious gusts; nor were the 
aspects of nature any more clement than the doings of the sky. 
For we passed through a stretch of blighted country, sparsely 
covered with brush, but handsomely enough diversified with 
factory chimneys. We landed in a soiled meadow among some 
pollards,^ and there smoked a pipe in a flaw of fair weather. 
But the wind blew so hard we could get little else to smoke. 
There were no natural objects in the neighborhood, but some 
sordid workshops. A group of children headed by a tall girl 
stood and watched us from a little distance all the time we 
stayed. I heartily wonder what they thought of us. 

At Hautmont, the lock was almost impassable; the landing 
place being steep and high, and the launch at a long distance. 
Near a dozen grimy workmen lent us a hand. They refused 
any reward; and, what is much better, refused it handsomely, 
without conveying any sense of insult. ''It is a way we have in 
^ Trees with the crowns cut out. 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED 33 

our countryside," said they. And a very becoming way it is. 
In Scotland, where also you will get services for nothing, the 
good people reject your money as if you had been trying to 
corrupt a voter. When people take the trouble to do dignified 
acts, it is worth while to take a little more, and allow the dignity 
to be common to all concerned. But in our brave Saxon coun- 
tries, where we plod threescore years and ten in the mud, and 
the wind keeps singing in our ears from birth to burial, we do 
our good and bad with a high hand and almost offensively; and 
make even our alms a witness-bearing and an act of war 
against the wrong. 

After Hautmont, the sun came forth again and the wind went 
down; and a little paddling took us beyond the ironworks and 
through a delectable land. The river wound among low hills, 
so that sometimes the sun was at our backs, and sometimes it 
stood right ahead, and the river before us was one sheet of in- 
tolerable glory. On either hand, meadows and orchards bor- 
dered, with a margin of sedge and water flowers, upon the river. 
The hedges were of great height, woven about the trunks of 
hedgerow elms; and the fields, as they were often very small, 
looked like a series of bowers along the stream. There was never 
any prospect; sometimes a hilltop with its trees would look over 
the nearest hedgerow, just to make a middle distance ^ for the 
sky; but that was all. The heaven was bare of clouds. The at- 
mosphere, after the rain, was of enchanting purity. The river 
doubled among the hillocks, a shining strip of mirror glass; and 
the dip of the paddles set the flowers shaking along the brink. 

In the meadows wandered black and white cattle fantastically 
marked. One beast, with a white head and the rest of the body 
glossy black, came to the edge to drink, and stood gravely 
twitching his ears at me as I went by, like some sort of pre- 
posterous clergyman in a play. A moment after I heard a loud 
plunge, and, turning my head, saw the clergyman struggling to 
shore. The bank had given way under his feet. 



34 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

Besides the cattle, we saw no living things except a few birds 
and a great many fishermen. These sat along the edges of the 
meadows, sometimes with one rod, sometimes with as many as 
half a score. They seemed stupefied with contentment; and 
when we induced them to exchange a few words with us about 
the weather, their voices sounded quiet and far-away. There 
was a strange diversity of opinion among them as to the kind 
of fish for which they set their lures; although they were all 
agreed in this, that the river was abundantly supplied. Where 
it was plain that no two of them had ever caught the same kind 
of fish, we could not help suspecting that perhaps not any one 
of them had ever caught a fish at all. I hope, since the afternoon 
was so lovely, that they were one and all rewarded; and that a 
silver booty went home in every basket for the pot. Some of 
my friends would cry shame on me for this ; but I prefer a man, 
were he only an angler, to the bravest pair of gills in all God's 
waters. I do not affect fishes unless when cooked in sauce; 
whereas an angler is an important piece of river scenery, and 
hence deserves some recognition among canoeists. He can 
always tell you where you are after a mild fashion; and his quiet 
presence serves to accentuate the solitude and stillness, and re- 
mind you of the glittering citizens below your boat. 

The Sambre turned so industriously to and fro among his 
little hills, that it was past six before we drew near the lock at 
Quartes. There were some children on the towpath, with whom 
the Cigarette fell into a chaffing talk as they ran along beside us. 
It was in vain that I warned him. In vain I told him, in English, 
that boys were the most dangerous creatures; and if once you be- 
gan with them, it was safe to end in a shower of stones. For 
my own part, whenever anything was addressed to me, I smiled 
gently and shook my head as though I were an inoffensive person 
inadequately acquainted with French. For indeed I have had 
such experience at home, that I would sooner meet many wild 
animals than a troop of healthy urchins. 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED 35 

But I was doing injustice to these peaceable young Hain- 
aulters.-"^ When the Cigarette went off to make inquiries, I got 
out upon the bank to smoke a pipe and superintend the boats, 
and became at once the center of much amiable curiosity. The 
children had been joined by this time by a young woman and a 
mild lad who had lost an arm; and this gave me more security. 
When I let slip my first word or so in French, a Httle girl nodded 
her head with a comical grown-up air. "Ah, you see," she said, 
''he understands well enough now; he was just making beheve." 
And the little group laughed together very good-naturedly. 

They were much impressed when they heard we came from 
England; and the little girl proffered the information that Eng- 
land was an island "and a far way from here — bien loin 
dHci:' 

"Ay, you may say that, a far way from here," said the lad 
with one arm. 

I was as nearly homesick as ever I was in my life; they seemed 
to make it such an incalculable distance to the place where I 
first saw the day. 

They admired the canoes very much. And I observed one 
piece of delicacy in these children which is worthy of record. 
They had been deafening us for the last hundred yards with 
petitions for a sail; ay, and they deafened us to the same tune 
next morning when we came to start; but then, when the canoes 
were lying empty, there was no word of any such petition. 
Delicacy? or perhaps a bit of fear for the water in so crank a 
vessel? I hate cynicism a great deal worse than I do the devil; 
unless perhaps the two were the same thing? And yet 'tis a 
good tonic; the cold tub and bath towel of the sentiments; and 
positively necessary to life in cases of advanced sensibility. 

From the boats they turned to my costume. They could not 
make enough of my red sash; and my knife filled them with awe. 

"They make them like that in England," said the boy with 
^ Of Hainault, a district in northeastern France. 



36 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

one arm. I was glad he did not know how badly we make them 
in England nowadays. ''They are for people who go away to 
sea," he added, ''and to defend one's life against great fish." 

I felt I was becoming a more and more romantic figure to the 
little group at every word. And so I suppose I was. Even my 
pipe, although it was an ordinary French clay, pretty well 
"trousered," ^ as they call it, would have a rarity in their eyes, 
as a thing coming from so far away. And if my feathers were 
not very fine in themselves, they were all from over seas. One 
thing in my outfit, however, tickled them out of all politeness; 
and that was the bemired condition of my canvas shoes. I sup- 
pose they were sure the mud at any rate was a home product. 
The little girl (who was the genius of the party) displayed her 
own sabots ^ in competition; and I wish you could have seen how 
gracefully and merrily she did it. 

The young woman's milk can, a great amphora ^ of hammered 
brass, stood some way off upon the sward. I was glad of an 
opportunity to divert public attention from myself, and return 
some of the compliments I had received. So I admired it cor- 
dially both for form and color, telling them, and very truly, that 
it was as beautiful as gold. They were not surprised. The 
things were plainly the boast of the countryside. And the 
children expatiated on the costliness of the amphorae, w^hich sell 
sometimes as high as thirty francs ^ apiece; told me how they 
were carried on donkeys, one on either side of the saddle, a 
brave caparison ^ in themselves; and how they were to be seen 
all over the district, and at the larger farms in great number and 
of great size. 

^ Colored. 2 Wooden shoes. ^ A large jar with two handles. 

^ A franc is worth about twenty cents. 

^ Gorgeous harness or trappings for a horse. 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 37 

PONT-SUR-SAMBRE: WE ARE PEDDLERS 

THE Cigarette returned with good news. There were beds 
to be had some ten minutes' walk from where we were, at 
a place called Pont. We stowed the canoes in a granary, and 
asked among the children for a guide. The circle at once wid- 
ened round us, and our offers of reward were received in dis- 
piriting silence. We were plainly a pair of Bluebeards ^ to the 
children; they might speak to us in public places, and where they 
had the advantage of numbers; but it was another thing to 
venture off alone with two uncouth and legendary characters, 
who had dropped from the clouds upon their hamlet this quiet 
afternoon, sashed and beknived, and with a flavor of great 
voyages. The owner of the granary came to our assistance, 
singled out one little fellow and threatened him with corporal- 
ities ; ^ or I suspect we should have had to find the way for our- 
selves. As it was, he was more frightened at the granary man 
than the strangers, having perhaps had some experience of the 
former. But I fancy his little heart must have been going at a 
fine rate; for he kept trotting at a respectful distance in front, 
and looking back at us with scared eyes. Not otherwise may 
the children of the young world have guided Jove " or one of his 
Olympian compeers on an adventure. 

A miry lane led us up from Quartes with its church and 
bickering windmill. The hinds ^ were trudging homewards from 
the fields. A brisk little old woman passed us by. She was 
seated across a donkey between a pair of glittering milk cans; 
and, as she went, she kicked jauntily with her heels upon the 
donkey's side, and scattered shrill remarks among the wayfarers. 
It was notable that none of the tired men took the trouble to 
reply. Our conductor soon led us out of the lane and across 
country. The sun had gone down, but the west in front of us 
1 Corporal punishment. 2 Country laborers. 



38 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

was one lake of level gold. The path wandered awhile in the 
open, and then passed under a trellis like a bower indefinitely 
prolonged. On either hand were shadowy orchards; cottages 
lay low among the leaves and sent their smoke to heaven; every 
here and there, in an opening, appeared the great gold face of 
the west. 

I never saw the Cigarette in such an idyllic frame of mind. He 
waxed positively lyrical in praise of country scenes. I was little 
less exhilarated myself; the mild air of the evening, the shadows, 
the rich Hghts, and the silence made a symphonious accompani- 
ment about our walk; and we both determined to avoid towns 
for the future and sleep in hamlets. 

At last the path went between two houses, and turned the 
party out into a wide, muddy highroad, bordered, as far as the 
eye could reach on either hand, by an unsightly village. The 
houses stood well back, leaving a ribbon of waste land on either 
side of the road, where there were stacks of firewood, carts, 
barrows, rubbish heaps, and a little doubtful grass. Away on 
the left, a gaunt tower stood in the middle of the street. What 
it had been in past ages, I know not : probably a hold ^ in time 
of war; but nowadays it bore an illegible dial plate in its upper 
parts, and near the bottom an iron letter box. 

The inn to which we had been recommended at Quartes was 
full, or else the landlady did not like our looks. I ought to say, 
that with our long, damp India-rubber bags, we presented rather 
a doubtful type of civilization: like rag-and-bone men,^ the 
Cigarette imagined. ''These gentlemen are peddlers? — Ces 
messieurs sont des marchands?^' — asked the landlady. And 
then, without waiting for an answxr, which I suppose she thought 
superfluous in so plain a case, recommended us to a butcher who 
lived hard by the tower and took in travelers to lodge. 

Thither went we. But the butcher was flitting,^ and all his 

^ A stronghold used as a fortress and a prison. ^ Ragpickers. 

^ Scotch word for moving. 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 39 

beds were taken down. Or else he didn't like our look. As a 
parting shot, we had "These gentlemen are peddlers?" 

It began to grow dark in earnest. We could no longer dis- 
tinguish the faces of the people who passed us by with an in- 
articulate good evening. And the householders of Pont seemed 
very economical with their oil; for we saw not a single window 
lighted in all that long village. I believe it is the longest village 
in the world; but I dare say in our predicament every pace 
counted three times over. We were much cast down when we 
came to the last auherge^ and looking in at the dark door, asked 
timidly if we could sleep there for the night. A female voice 
assented in no very friendly tones. We clapped the bags down 
and found our way to chairs. 

The place was in total darkness, save a red glow in the chinks 
and ventilators of the stove. But now the landlady lit a lamp 
to see her new guests; I suppose the darkness was what saved 
us another expulsion, for I cannot say she looked gratified at 
our appearance. We were in a large bare apartment, adorned 
with two allegorical prints of Music and Painting, and a copy of 
the Law against Public Drunkenness. On one side, there was a 
bit of a bar, with some half a dozen bottles. Two laborers sat 
waiting supper, in attitudes of extreme weariness; a plain-looking 
lass bustled about with a sleepy child or two; and the landlady 
began to derange the pots upon the stove and set some beefsteak 
to grill. 

"These gentlemen are peddlers?" she asked sharply. And 
that was all the conversation forthcoming. We began to think 
we might be peddlers after all. I never knew a population with 
so narrow a range of conjecture as the innkeepers of Pont-sur- 
Sambre. But manners and bearing have not a wider currency 
than bank notes. You have only to get far enough out of your 
beat, and all your accomplished airs will go for nothing. These 
Hainaulters could see no difference between us and the average 

1 An inn. 



40 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

peddler. Indeed we had some grounds for reflection, while the 
steak was getting ready, to see how perfectly they accepted us 
at their own valuation, and how our best politeness and best 
efforts at entertainment seemed to fit quite suitably with the 
character of packmen. At least it seemed a good account of the 
profession in France, that even before such judges, we could not 
beat them at our own weapons. 

At last we were called to table. The two hinds (and one of 
them looked sadly worn and white in the face, as though sick 
with overwork and underfeeding) supped off a single plate of 
some sort of bread berry/ some potatoes in their jackets, a 
small cup of coffee sweetened with sugar candy, and one tumbler 
of swipes.^ The landlady, her son, and the lass aforesaid, took 
the same. Our meal was quite a banquet by comparison. We 
had some beefsteak, not so tender as it might have been, some 
of the potatoes, some cheese, an extra glass of the swipes, and 
white sugar in our coffee. 

You see what it is to be a gentleman — I beg your pardon, 
what it is to be a peddler. It had not before occurred to me 
that a peddler was a great man in a laborer's alehouse; but now 
that I had to enact the part for an evening, I found that so it 
was. He has in his hedge quarters, somewhat the same pre- 
eminency as the man who takes a private parlor in a hotel. The 
more you look into it, the more infinite are the class distinctions 
among men; and possibly, by a happy dispensation, there is no 
one at all at the bottom of the scale; no one but can find some 
superiority over somebody else, to keep up his pride withal. 

We were displeased enough with our fare. Particularly the 
Cigarette; for I tried to make believe that I was amused with the 
adventure, tough beefsteak and all. According to the Lucretian 
maxim,** our steak should have been flavored by the look of the 
other people's bread berry. But we did not find it so in practice. 

^ Bread steeped in hot water and sweetened with sugar. 
2 Poor, weak beer. 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 41 

You may have a head knowledge that other people live more 
poorly than yourself, but it is not agreeable — I was going to 
say, it is against the etiquette of the universe — to sit at the 
same table and pick your own superior diet from among their 
crusts. I had not seen such a thing done since the greedy boy 
at school with his birthday cake. It was odious enough to wit- 
ness, I could remember; and I had never thought to play the 
part myself. But there again you see what it is to be a peddler. 

There is no doubt that the poorer classes in our country are 
much more charitably disposed than their superiors in wealth. 
And I fancy it must arise a great deal from the comparative 
indistinction of the easy and the not so easy in these ranks. A 
workman or a peddler cannot shutter himself off from his less 
comfortable neighbors. If he treats himself to a luxury, he 
must do it in the face of a dozen who cannot. And what should 
more directly lead to charitable thoughts? . . . Thus the poor 
man, camping out in life, sees it as it is, and knows that every 
mouthful he puts in his belly has been wrenched out of the 
fingers of the hungry. 

But at a certain stage of prosperity, as in a balloon ascent, the 
fortunate person passes through a zone of clouds, and sublunary 
matters are thenceforward hidden from his view. He sees nothing 
but the heavenly bodies, all in admirable order and positively as 
good as new. He finds himself surrounded in the most touching 
manner by the attentions of Providence, and compares himself 
involuntarily with the lilies and the skylarks.^ He does not pre- 
cisely sing, of course; but then he looks so unassuming in his open 
Landau!^ If all the world dined at one table, this philosophy 
would meet with some rude knocks. 

^ A four-wheeled vehicle with a top so divided that it may be closed or 
thrown open. 



42 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

PONT-SUR-SAMBRE: THE TRAVELING MERCHANT 

LIKE the la-ckeys in Moliere's farce," when the true noble- 
man broke in on their high Hfe below stairs, we were 
destined to be confronted with a real peddler. To make the 
lesson still more poignant for fallen gentlemen like us, he was a 
peddler of infinitely more consideration than the sort of scurvy^ 
fellows we were taken for; like a lion among mice, or ship of war 
bearing down upon two cockboats. Indeed, he did not deserve 
the name of peddler at all; he was a traveling merchant. 

I suppose it was about half past eight when this worthy, 
Monsieur Hector Gilliard of Maubeuge, turned up at the ale- 
house door in a tilt cart ^ drawn by a donkey, and cried cheerily 
on the inhabitants. He was a lean, nervous flibbertigibbet "' of 
a man, with something the look of an actor, and something the 
look of a horsejockey. He had evidently prospered without any 
of the favors of education; for he adhered with stern simplicity 
to the masculine gender,^ and in the course of the evening passed 
off some fancy futures " in a very florid style of architecture. 
With him came his wife, a comely young woman with her hair 
tied in a yellow kerchief, and their son, a little fellow of four, in 
a blouse and military kepi.^ It was notable that the child was 
many degrees better dressed than either of the parents. We were 
informed he was already at a boarding school; but the holidays 
having just commenced, he was off to spend them with his 
parents on a cruise. An enchanting holiday occupation, was it 
not? to travel all day with father and mother in the tilt cart full 
of countless treasures; the green country rattling by on either 
side, and the children in all the villages contemplating him with 
envy and wonder? It is better fun, during the holidays, to be 
the son of a traveling merchant, than son and heir to the greatest 
cotton spinner in creation. And as for being a reigning prince — 
indeed I never saw one if it was not Master Gilliard ! 

^ Vile, mean. ^ \ q^, ,-t with a canvas cover. ^ A cap with a vizor. 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 43 

While M. Hector and the son of the house were putting up 
the donkey, and getting all the valuables under lock and key, 
the landlady warmed up the remains of our beefsteak, and fried 
the cold potatoes in slices, and Madame Gilliard set herself to 
waken the boy, who had come far that day, and w^as peevish and 
dazzled by the light. He was no sooner awake than he began to 
prepare himself for supper by eating galette,^ unripe pears, and 
cold potatoes — with, so far as I could judge, positive benefit to 
his appetite. 

The landlady, fired with motherly emulation, awoke her own 
Httle girl, and the two children WTre confronted. Master 
Gilliard looked at her for a moment, very much as a dog looks 
at his own reflection in a mirror before he turns away. He was 
at that time absorbed in the galette. His mother seemed crest- 
fallen that he should display so little inclination towards the 
other sex, and expressed her disappointment with some candor 
and a very proper reference to the influence of years. 

Sure enough a time will come when he \\i\\ pay more attention 
to the girls, and think a great deal less of his mother; let us hope 
she will like it as well as she seemed to fancy. But it is odd 
enough; the very women w^ho profess most contempt for man- 
kind as a sex, seem to find even its ugliest particulars rather 
lively and high-minded in their own sons. 

The little girl looked longer and with more interest, probably 
because she was in her own house, while he was a traveler and 
accustomed to strange sights. And besides there was no galette 
in the case with her. 

All the time of supper, there was nothing spoken of but my 
young lord. The two parents were both absurdly fond of their 
child. Monsieur kept insisting on his sagacity: how he knew all 
the children at school by name; and when this utterly failed on 
trial, how he was cautious and exact to a strange degree, and if 
asked anything, he would sit and think — and think, and if he 

^ A cooky. 



44 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

did not know it, ''my faith, he wouldn't tell you at all — ma 
foi, il ne vous le dira pas." Which is certainly a very high degree 
of caution. At intervals, M. Hector would appeal to his wife, 
with his mouth full of beefsteak, as to the little fellow's age at 
such or such a time when he had said or done something memo- 
rable; and I noticed that Madame usually pooh-poohed these 
inquiries. She herself was not boastful in her vein; but she never 
had her fill of caressing the child; and she seemed to take a gentle 
pleasure in recalling all that was fortunate in his little existence. 
No schoolboy could have talked more of the holidays which were 
just beginning and less of the black school time which must 
inevitably follow after. She showed, with a pride perhaps 
partly mercantile in origin, his pockets preposterously swollen 
with tops and whistles and string. When she called at a house 
in the way of business, it appeared he kept her company; and 
whenever a sale was made, received a sou ^ out of the profit. 
Indeed they spoiled him vastly, these two good people. But 
they had an eye to his manners for all that, and reproved him 
for some little faults in breeding which occurred from time to 
time during supper. 

On the whole, I was not much hurt at being taken for a 
peddler. I might think that I ate with greater delicacy, or that 
my mistakes in French belonged to a different order; but it was 
plain that these distinctions would be thrown away upon the 
landlady and the two laborers. In all essential things, we and 
the Gilliards cut very much the same figure in the alehouse 
kitchen. M. Hector was more at home, indeed, and took a higher 
tone with the world; but that was explicable on the ground of 
his driving a donkey cart, while we poor bodies tramped afoot. 
I dare say, the rest of the company thought us dying with envy, 
though in no ill sense, to be as far up in the profession as the new 
arrival. 

And of one thing I am sure : that everyone thawed and became 
^ Worth about a cent. 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 45 

more humanized and conversable as soon as these innocent 
people appeared upon the scene. I would not very readily trust 
the traveling merchant with any extravagant sum of money; 
but I am sure his heart was in the right place. In this mixed 
world, if you can find one or two sensible places in a man, above 
all, if you should find a whole family living together on such 
pleasant terms, you may surely be satisfied, and take the rest 
for granted; or, what is a great deal better, boldly make up your 
mind that you can do perfectly well without the rest; and that 
ten thousand bad traits cannot make a single good one any the 
less good. 

It was getting late. M. Hector lit a stable lantern and went 
off to his cart for some arrangements; and my young gentleman 
proceeded to divest himself of the better part of his raiment, and 
play gymnastics on his mother's lap, and thence on to the floor, 
with accompaniment of laughter. 

''Are you going to sleep alone?" asked the servant 
lass. 

"There's little fear of that," says Master Gilliard. 

"You sleep alone at school," objected his mother. "Come, 
come, you must be a man." 

But he protested that school was a different matter from the 
holidays; that there were dormitories at school, and silenced the 
discussion with kisses, his mother smiling, no one better pleased 
than she. 

There certainly was, as he phrased it, very little fear that he 
should sleep alone; for there was but one bed for the trio. We, 
on our part, had firmly protested against one man's accommoda- 
tion for two; and we had a double-bedded pen in the loft of the 
house, furnished, beside the beds, with exactly three hat pegs 
and one table. There was not so much as a glass of water. But 
the window would open, by good fortune. 

Some time before I fell asleep the loft was full of the sound of 
mighty snoring: the Gilliards, and the laborers, and the people 



46 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

of the inn, all at it, I suppose, with one consent. The young 
moon outside shone very clearly over Pont-sur-Sambre, and 
down upon the alehouse where all we peddlers were abed. 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED: TO LANDRECTES 

IN the morning, when we came downstairs, the landlady 
pointed out to us two pails of water behind the street door. 
" Voild de Veau pour vous debarbouiller/' ^ says she. And so there 
we made a shift to wash ourselves, while Madame GiUiard 
brushed the family boots on the outer doorstep, and M. Hector, 
whistling cheerily, arranged some small goods for the day's 
campaign in a portable chest of drawers, which formed a part of 
his baggage. Meanwhile the child was letting off Waterloo 
crackers "' all over the floor. 

I wonder, by the by, what they call Waterloo crackers in 
France; perhaps Austerlitz " crackers. There is a great deal in 
the point of view. Do you remember the Frenchman who, 
traveling by way of Southampton, was put down in Waterloo 
Station, and had to drive across Waterloo bridge? ^ He had a 
mind to go home again, it seems. 

Pont itself is on the river, but whereas it is ten minutes' walk 
from Quartes by dry land, it is six weary kilometers ^ by water. 
We left our bags at the inn, and walked to our canoes through 
the wet orchards unencumbered. Some of the children were 
there to see us off, but we were no longer the mysterious beings 
of the night before. A departure is much less romantic than an 
unexplained arrival in the golden evening. Although we might 
be greatly taken at a ghost's first appearance, we should behold 
him vanish with comparative equanimity. 

1 "There is some water for you to wash your faces." 

2 A kilometer is five-eighths of a mile. 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED 47 

The good folk of the inn at Pont, when we called there for the 
bags, were overcome with marveling. At sight of these two 
dainty little boats, with a fluttering union jack ^ on each, and 
all the varnish shining from the sponge, they began to perceive 
that they had entertained angels unawares.^ The landlady 
stood upon the bridge, probably lamenting she had charged so 
little; the son ran to and fro, and called out the neighbors to 
enjoy the sight; and we paddled away from quite a crowd of 
wrapt observers. These gentlemen peddlers, indeed! Now you 
see their quality too late. 

The whole day was showery, with occasional drenching 
plumps. We were soaked to the skin, then partially dried in the 
sun, then soaked once more. But there were some calm intervals, 
and one notably, when we were skirting the forest of Mormal, 
a sinister name to the ear, but a place most gratifying to sight 
and smell. It looked solemn along the river side, drooping its 
boughs into the water, and piling them up aloft into a wall of 
leaves. What is a forest but a city of nature's own, full of hardy 
and innocuous living things, where there is nothing dead and 
nothing made with the hands, but the citizens themselves are 
.the houses and public monuments? There is nothing so much 
alive, and yet so quiet, as a woodland; and a pair of people, 
swinging past in canoes, feel very small and bustling by com- 
parison. 

And surely of all smells in the world, the smell of many trees is 
the sweetest and most fortifying. The sea has a rude, pistoling ^ 
sort of odor, that takes you in the nostrils like snuff, and carries 
with it a fine sentiment of open water and tall ships; but the 
smell of a forest, which comes nearest to this in tonic quality, 
surpasses it by many degrees in the quality of softness. Again, 
the smell of the sea has little variety, but the smell of a forest is 
infinitely changeful; it varies with the hour of the day not in 
strength merely, but in character; and the different sorts of 
^ The English flag. ^ \n odor as penetrating as if fired from a pistol. 



48 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

trees, as you go from one zone of the wood to another, seem to 
Hve among different kinds of atmosphere. Usually the resin of 
the fir predominates. But some woods are more coquettish in 
their habits; and the breath of the forest of Mormal, as it came 
aboard upon us that showery afternoon, was perfumed with 
nothing less delicate than sweetbrier. 

I wish our way had always lain among woods. Trees are the 
most civil society. An old oak that has been growing where he 
stands since before the Reformation, taller than many spires, 
more stately than the greater part of mountains, and yet a living 
thing, liable to sicknesses and death, like you and me: is not that 
in itself a speaking lesson in history? But acres on acres full of 
such patriarchs contiguously rooted, their green tops billowing 
in the wind, their stalwart younglings pushing up about their 
knees: a whole forest, healthy and beautiful, giving color to the 
light, giving perfume to the air: what is this but the most im- 
posing piece in nature's repertory? Heine " wished to lie like 
Merlin under the oaks of Broceliande.'* I should not be satisfied 
with one tree; but if the wood grew together like a banyan grove," 
I would be buried under the taproot of the whole; my parts 
should circulate from oak to oak; and my consciousness should 
be diffused abroad in all the forest, and give a common heart to 
that assembly of green spires, so that it also might rejoice in its 
own loveliness and dignity. I think I feel a thousand squirrels 
leaping from bough to bough in my vast mausoleum; and the 
birds and the winds merrily coursing over its uneven, leafy 
surface. 

Alas! the forest of Mormal is only a little bit of a wood, and 
it was but for a little way that we skirted by its boundaries. 
And the rest of the time the rain kept coming in squirts and the 
wind in squalls, until one's heart grew weary of such fitful, 
scolding weather. It was odd how the showers began when we 
had to carry the boats over a lock, and must expose our legs. 
They always did. This is a sort of thing that readily begets a 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED 49 

personal feeling against nature. There seems no reason why 
the shower should not come five minutes before or five minutes 
after, unless you suppose an intention to affront you. The 
Cigarette had a mackintosh w'hich put him more or less above 
these contrarieties. But I had to bear the brunt uncovered. I 
began to remember that nature was a woman. My companion, 
in a rosier temper, listened with great satisfaction to my jere- 
miads,^ and ironically concurred. He instanced, as a cognate 
matter,^ the action of the tides, "Which," said he, "was alto- 
gether designed for the confusion of canoeists, except in so far 
as it was calculated to minister to a barren vanity on the part 
of the moon." 

At the last lock, some little w^ay out of Landrecies, I refused 
to go any farther; and sat in a drift of rain by the side of the 
bank, to have a reviving pipe. A vivacious old man, w^hom I 
take to have been the devil, drew near and questioned me about 
our journey. In the fullness of my heart, I laid bare our plans 
before him. He said, it was the silliest enterprise that ever he 
heard of. Why, did I not know, he asked me, that it was noth- 
ing but locks, locks, locks, the whole way? not to mention that, 
at this season of the year, w^e should find the Oise quite dry? 
"Get into a train, my little young man," said he, "and go you 
away home to your parents." I was so astounded at the man's 
malice, that I could only stare at him in silence. A tree would 
never have spoken to me like this. At last, I got out with some 
words. We had come from Antwerp already, I told him, which 
w^as a good long way; and we should do the rest in spite of him. 
Yes, I said, if there were no other reason, I w^ould do it now, just 
because he had dared to say we could not. The pleasant old 
gentleman looked at me sneeringly, made an allusion to my 
canoe, and marched off, wagging his head. 

I was still inwardly fuming, when up came a pair of young 
fellows, who imagined I was the Cigarette^ s servant, on a com- 
^ Laments or tales of sorrow. 2 ^ f^^t of a similar nature. 



50 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

parison, I suppose, of my bare jersey with the other's mackin- 
tosh, and asked me many questions about my place and my 
master's character. I said he was a good enough fellow, but had 
this absurd voyage on the head. ''O no, no," said one, "you 
must not say that; it is not absurd; it is very courageous of him." 
I believe these were a couple of angels sent to give me heart 
again. It was truly fortifying to reproduce all the old man's 
insinuations, as if they were original to me in my character of a 
malcontent footman, and have them brushed away like so many 
flies by these admirable young men. 

When I recounted this affair to the Cigarette, "they must 
have a curious idea of how English servants behave," says he, 
dryly, ''for you treated me like a brute beast at the lock." 

I was a good deal mortified; but my temper had suffered, it is 
a fact. 

AT LANDRECIES 

AT Landrecies the rain still fell and the wind still blew; but 
we found a double-bedded room with plenty of furniture, 
real water jugs with real water in them, and dinner: a real 
dinner, not innocent of real wine. After having been a peddler 
for one night, and a butt for the elements during the whole of 
the next day, these comfortable circumstances fell on my heart 
like sunshine. There was an English fruiterer at dinner, travel- 
ing with a Belgian fruiterer; in the evening at the cafe, we 
watched our compatriot drop a good deal of money at corks; " 
and I don't know why, but this pleased us. 

It turned out we were to see more of Landrecies than we 
expected; for the weather next day was simply bedlamite.'^ It 
is not the place one would have chosen for a day's rest; for it 
consists almost entirely of fortifications. Within the ramparts, 
a few blocks of houses, a long row of barracks, and a church 
figure, with what countenance they may, as the town. There 
seems to be no trade; and a shopkeeper, from whom I bought a 



AT LANDRECIES • 51 

sixpenny flint and steel, was so much affected, that he filled my 
pockets with spare flints into the bargain. The only public 
buildings that had any interest for us, were the hotel and the 
cafe. But we visited the church. There lies Marshal Clarke. 
But as neither of us had ever heard of that military hero, we 
bore the associations of the spot with fortitude. 

In all garrison towns, guard calls, and reveilles, and such like 
make a fine romantic interlude in civic business. Bugles, and 
drums, and fifes are of themselves most excellent things in 
nature; and when they carry the mind to marching armies, and 
the picturesque vicissitudes of war, they stir up something proud 
in the heart. But in a shadow of a town like Landrecies, with 
little else moving, these points of war made a proportionate 
commotion. Indeed, they were the only things to remember. 
It was just the place to hear the round ^ going by at night in the 
darkness, with the solid tramp of men marching, and the start- 
ling reverberations of the drum. It reminded you, that even 
this place was a point in the great warfaring system of Europe, 
and might on some future day be ringed about with cannon 
smoke and thunder, and make itself a name among strong towns. 

The drum, at any rate, from its martial voice and notable 
physiological effect, nay even from its cumbrous and comical 
shape, stands alone among the instruments of noise. And if it 
be true, as I have heard it said, that drums are covered with 
asses' skin, what a picturesque irony is there in that! As if this 
long-suffering animal's hide had not been sufl&ciently belabored 
during life, now by Lyonnese costermongers,^ now by presump- 
tuous Hebrew prophets,^* it must be stripped from his poor hinder 
quarters after death, stretched on a drum, and beaten night 
after night round the streets of every garrison town in Europe. 
And up the heights of Alma and Spicheren/^ and wherever 
death has his red flag a-flying, and sounds his own potent tuck ^ 

1 A military patrol. 2 Peddlers of fruits and vegetables. 

^ Beat of a drum, or blast of a trumpet, 



52 • AN INLAND VOYAGE 

upon the cannons, there also must the drummer boy, hurrying 
with white face over fallen comrades, batter and bemaul this 
slip of skin from the loins of peaceable donkeys. 

Generally a man is never more uselessly employed than when 
he is at this trick of bastinadoing asses' hide. We know what 
effect it has in life, and how your dull ass will not mend his pace 
with beating. But in this state of mummy and melancholy 
survival of itself, when the hollow skin reverberates to the 
drummer's wrist, and each dub-a-dub goes direct to a man's 
heart, and puts madness there, and that disposition of the pulses 
which we, in our big way of talking, nickname Heroism: — is 
there not something in the nature of a revenge upon the donkey's 
persecutors? Of old, he might say, you drubbed me up hill and 
down dale, and I must endure; but now that I am dead, those dull 
thwacks that were scarcely audible in country lanes, have become 
stirring music in front of the brigade; and for every blow that you 
lay on my old greatcoat, you will see a comrade stumble and fall. 

Not long after the drums had passed the cafe, the Cigarette 
and the Arethusa began to grow sleepy, and set out for the hotel 
which was only a door or two away. But although we had been 
somewhat indifferent to Landrecies, Landrecies had not been 
indifferent to us. All day, we learned, people had been running 
out between the squalls to visit our two boats. Hundreds of 
persons, so said report, although it fitted ill with our idea of the 
town — hundreds of persons had inspected them where they 
lay in a coal shed. We were becoming lions in Landrecies, who 
had been only peddlers the night before in Pont. 

And now, when we left the cafe, we were pursued and over- 
taken at the hotel door by no less a person than the Juge de 
Paix; ^ a functionary, as far as I can make out, of the character 
of a Scotch Sheriff Substitute. He gave us his card and invited 
us to sup with him on the spot, very neatly, very gracefully, as 
Frenchmen can do these things. It was for the credit of Landre- 
1 Justice of the Peace. 



AT LANDRECIES 53 

cies, said he; and although we knew very well how little credit 
we could do the place, we must have been churlish fellows to 
refuse an invitation so politely introduced. 

The house of the Judge was close by; it was a well-appointed 
bachelor's establishment, with a curious collection of old brass 
warming pans upon the walls. Some of these were most elabo- 
rately carved. It seemed a picturesque idea for a collector. You 
could not help thinking how many nightcaps had wagged over 
these warming pans in past generations; what jests may have 
been made and kisses taken, while they were in service; and how 
often they had been uselessly paraded in the bed of death. If 
they could only speak, at what absurd, indecorous, and tragical 
scenes had they not been present! 

The wine was excellent. When we made the Judge our com- 
pliments upon a bottle, "I do not give it you as my worst," said 
he. I wonder when Englishmen will learn these hospitable 
graces. They are worth learning; they set off life, and make 
ordinary moments ornamental. 

There were two other Landrecienses present. One was the 
collector of something or other, I forget what; the other, we were 
told, was the principal notary of the place. So it happened that 
we all five more or less followed the law. At this rate the talk 
was pretty certain to become technical. The Cigarette ex- 
pounded the poor laws very magisterially. And a little later I 
found myself laying down the Scotch Law of Illegitimacy, of 
which I am glad to say I know nothing. The collector and the 
notary, who were both married men, accused the Judge, who 
was a bachelor, of having started the subject. He deprecated 
the charge, with a conscious, pleased air, just like all the men I 
have ever seen, be they French or English. How strange that 
we should all, in our unguarded moments, rather like to be 
thought a bit of a rogue with the women! 

As the evening went on, the wine grew more to my taste; the 
spirits proved better than the wine; the company was genial. 



54 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

This was the highest watermark of popular favor on the whole 
cruise. After all, being in a Judge's house, was there not some- 
thing semiofficial in the tribute? And so, remembering what a 
great country France is, we did full justice to our entertainment. 
Landrecies had been a long while asleep before we returned to 
the hotel ; and the sentries on the ramparts were already looking 
for daybreak. 

SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL: CANAL BOATS 

NEXT day we made a late start in the rain. The Judge 
politely escorted us to the end of the lock under an um- 
brella. We had now brought ourselves to a pitch of humility 
in the matter of weather not often attained except in the Scotch 
Highlands. A rag of blue sky or a glimpse of sunshine set our 
hearts singing; and when the rain was not heavy, we counted 
the day almost fair. 

Long lines of barges lay one after another along the canal; 
many of them looking mighty spruce and shipshape in their 
jerkin ^ of Archangel ^ tar picked out with white and green. 
Some carried gay iron railings and quite a parterre ^ of flower- 
pots. Children played on the decks, as heedless of the rain as if 
they had been brought up on Loch Carron ^^ side; men fished 
over the gunwale, some of them under umbrellas; women did 
their washing; and every barge boasted its mongrel cur by way 
of watchdog. Each one barked furiously at the canoes, running 
alongside until he had got to the end of his own ship, and so 
passing on the word to the dog aboard the next. We must have 
seen something like a hundred of these embarkations in the 
course of that day's paddle, ranged one after another like the 
houses in a street; and from not one of them were we disap- 
pointed of this accompaniment. It was like visiting a menagerie, 
the Cigarette remarked. 

^ A jacket or short coat. ^ a. garden having beds arranged in a pattern. 



SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL 55 

These little cities by the canal side had a very odd effect upon 
the mind. They seemed, with their flowerpots and smoking 
chimneys, their washings and dinners, a rooted piece of nature 
in the scene; and yet if only the canal below were to open, one 
junk after another would hoist sail or harness horses and swim 
away into all parts of France; and the impromptu hamlet w^ould 
separate, house by house, to the four w^inds. The children who 
played together to-day by the Sambre and Oise Canal, each at 
his own father's threshold, when and where might they next 
meet? 

For some time past the subject of barges had occupied a great 
deal of our talk, and we had projected an old age ^ on the canals 
of Europe. It was to be the most leisurely of progresses," now 
on a swift river at the tail of a steamboat, now waiting horses 
for days together on some inconsiderable junction. We should 
be seen pottering on deck in all the dignity of years, our white 
beards falling into our laps. We were ever to be busied among 
paint pots; so that there should be no white fresher, and no green 
more emerald than ours, in all the navy of the canals. There 
should be books in the cabin, and tobacco jars, and some old 
Burgundy as red as a November sunset and as odorous as a 
violet in April. There should be a flageolet whence the Cigarette, 
with cunning touch, should draw melting music under the stars; 
or perhaps, laying that aside, upraise his voice — somewhat 
thinner than of yore, and with here and there a quaver, or call it 
a natural grace note — in rich and solemn psalmody.^ 

All this simmering in my mind set me wishing to go aboard 
one of these ideal houses of lounging. I had plenty to choose 
from, as I coasted one after another, and the dogs bayed at me 
for a vagrant. At last I saw a nice old man and his wife looking 
at me with some interest, so I gave them good day and pulled 
up alongside. I began with a remark upon their dog, which had 
somewhat the look of a pointer; thence I slid into a compliment 
1 The singing of hymns. 



56 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

on Madame's flowers, and thence into a word in praise of their 

way of life. 

If you ventured on such an experiment in England you would 
get a slap in the face at oncQ. The hfe would be shown to be a 
vile one, not without a side shot at your better fortune. Now, 
what I like so much in France is the clear unflinching recognition 
by everybody of his own luck. They all know on which side 
their bread is buttered, and take a pleasure in showing it to 
others, which is surely the better part of religion. And they 
scorn to make a poor mouth over their poverty, which I take to 
be the better part of manliness. I have heard a woman in quite 
a better position at home, with a good bit of money in hand, 
refer to her own child with a horrid whine as "a poor man's 
child." I would not say such a thing to the Duke of West- 
minster.^ And the French are full of this spirit of independence. 
Perhaps it is the result of republican institutions, as they call 
them. Much more likely it is because there are so few people 
really poor, that the whiners are not enough to keep each other 
in countenance. 

The people on the barge were delighted to hear that I admired 
their state. They understood perfectly well, they told me, how 
Monsieur envied them. Without doubt Monsieur was rich; and 
in that case he might make a canal boat as pretty as a villa — 
joli comme un chdteau. And with that they invited me on board 
their own water villa. They apologized for their cabin; they had 
not been rich enough to make it as it ought to be. 

"The fire should have been here, at this side," explained the 
husband. "Then one might have a writing table in the middle 
— books — and" (comprehensively) "all. It would be quite 
coquettish — qa serait tont-a-fait coquet J^ And he looked about 
him as though the improvements were already made. It was 
plainly not the first time that he had thus beautified his cabin in 
imagination; and when next he makes a hit, I should expect to 
see the writing table in the middle. 



SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL 57 

Madame had three birds in a cage. They were no great thing, 
she explained. Fine birds were so dear. They had sought to get 
a Hollandais last winter in Rouen (Rouen? thought I; and is 
this whole mansion, with its dogs and birds and smoking chim- 
neys, so far a traveler as that? and as homely an object among the 
cliffs and orchards of the Seine as on the green plains of Sambre?) 
— they had sought to get a Hollandais last winter in Rouen; but 
these cost fifteen francs apiece — picture it — fifteen francs! 

^^ Pour un tout petit oiseau — For quite a little bird," added 
the husband. 

As I continued to admire, the apologetics died away, and the 
good people began to brag of their barge, and their happy condi- 
tion in life, as if they had been Emperor and Empress of the 
Indies. It was, in the Scotch phrase, a good hearing, and put 
me in good humor with the world. If people knew what an 
inspiriting thing it is to hear a man boasting, so long as he 
boasts of what he really has, I believe they would do it more 
freely and with a better grace. 

They began to ask about our voyage. You should have seen 
how they sympathized. They seemed half ready to give up 
their barge and follow us. But these canaletti ^ are only gypsies 
semidomesticated. The semidomestication came out in rather 
a pretty form. Suddenly Madame's brow darkened. "Ce- 
pendant/' ^ she began, and then stopped; and then began again 
by asking me if I were single? 

"Yes," said I. 

"And your friend who went by just now?" 

He also was unmarried. 

O then — all was well. She could not have wives left alone at 
home; but since there were no wives in the question, we were 
doing the best we could. 

"To see about one in the world," said the husband, "z7 w'y a 
que qa — there is nothing else worth while. A man, look you, 

^ Canal folk; evidently a word of 'Stevenson's own coining. ^ Yet. 



58 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

who sticks in his own village like a bear," he went on, " — very- 
well, he sees nothing. And then death is the end of all. And he 
has seen nothing." 

Madame reminded her husband of an Englishman who had 
come up this canal in a steamer. 

"Perhaps Mr. Moens " in the Ytene/^ I suggested. 

"That's it," assented the husband. "He had his wife and 
family with him, and servants. He came ashore at all the locks 
and asked the name of the villages, whether from boatmen or 
lock keepers; and then he wrote, wrote them down. O he wrote 
enormously! I suppose it was a wager." 

A wager was a common enough explanation for our own ex- 
ploits, but it seemed an original reason for taking notes. 



THE OISE IN FLOOD 

BEFORE nine next morning the two canoes were installed 
on a light country cart at Etreux: and we were soon follow- 
ing them along the side of a pleasant valley full of hop gardens 
and poplars. Agreeable villages lay here and there on the slope 
of the hill: notably, Tupigny, with the hop poles hanging their 
garlands in the very street, and the houses clustered with grapes. 
There was a faint enthusiasm on our passage; weavers put their 
heads to the windows; children cried out in ecstasy at sight of 
the two "boaties" — harqiiettes; and Housed pedestrians, who 
were acquainted with our charioteer, jested with him on the 
nature of his freight. 

We had a shower or two, but light and flying. The air was 
clean and sweet among all these green fields and green things 
growing. There was not a touch of autumn in the weather. 
And when, at Vadencourt, we launched from a little lawn oppo- 
site a mill, the sun broke forth and set all the leaves shining in 
the valley of the Oise. 



THE OISE IN FLOOD 59 

The river was swollen with the long rains. From Vadencourt 
all the way to Origny, it ran with ever quickening speed, taking 
fresh heart at each mile, and racing as though it already smelt 
the sea. The water was yellow and turbulent, swung with an 
angry eddy among half submerged willows, and made an angry 
clatter along stony shores. The course kept turning and turning 
in a narrow and well-timbered valley. Now, the river would 
approach the side, and run gliding along the chalky base of the 
hill, and show us a few open colza ^ fields among the trees. Now, 
it would skirt the garden walls of houses, where we might catch 
a glimpse through a doorway, and see a priest pacing in the 
checkered sunlight. Again, the foliage closed so thickly in 
front, that there seemed to be no issue; only a thicket of willows, 
overtopped by elms and poplars, under which the river ran flush 
and fleet, and where a kingfisher flew past like a piece of the blue 
sky. On these different manifestations, the sun poured its clear 
and catholic ^ looks. The shadows lay as solid on the swift sur- 
face of the stream as on the stable meadows. The light sparkled 
golden in the dancing poplar leaves, and brought the hills into 
communion with our eyes. And all the while the river never 
stopped running or took breath; and the reeds along the whole 
valley stood shivering from top to toe. 

There should be some myth (but if there is, I know it not) 
founded on the shivering of the reeds. There are not many 
things in nature more striking to man's eye. It is such an 
eloquent pantomime of terror; and to see such a number of 
terrified creatures taking sanctuary " in every nook along the 
shore, is enough to infect a silly ^ human with alarm. Perhaps 
they are only a-cold, and no wonder, standing waist deep in the 
stream. Or perhaps they have never got accustomed to the 
speed and fury of the river's flux, or the miracle of its continu- 
ous body. Pan " once played upon their forefathers; and so, by 

^ A variety of cabbage, cultivated for the oil obtained from its seeds. 
2 Comprehensive in sympathy. ^ Simple-minded. 



6o ■ AN INLAND VOYAGE 

the hands of his river, he still plays upon these later generations 
down all the valley of the Oise; and plays the same air, both 
sweet and shrill, to tell us of the beauty and the terror of the 
world. 

The canoe was like a leaf in the current. It took it up and 
shook it, and carried it masterfully away, like a centaur ^ carry- 
ing off a nymph. To keep some command on our direction re- 
quired hard and diligent plying of the paddle. The river was in 
such a hurry for the sea! Every drop of water ran in a panic, 
like as many people in a frightened crowd. But what crowd was 
ever so numerous, or so single-minded? All the objects of sight 
went by at a dance measure; the eyesight raced with the racing 
river; the exigencies of every moment kept the pegs screwed so 
tight, that our being quivered like a well-tuned instrument; and 
the blood shook off its lethargy, and trotted through all the 
highways and byways of the veins and arteries, and in and out 
of the heart, as if circulation were but a holiday journey, and not 
the daily moil of threescore years and ten. The reeds might nod 
their heads in warning, and with tremulous gestures tell how the 
river was as cruel as it was strong and cold, and how death 
lurked in the eddy underneath the willows. But the reeds had 
to stand where they were; and those who stand still are always 
timid advisers. As for us, we could have shouted aloud. If this 
lively and beautiful river were, indeed, a thing of death's con- 
trivance, the old ashen rogue had famously outwitted himself 
with us. I was living three to the minute. I was scoring points 
against him every stroke of my paddle, every turn of the stream. 
I have rarely had better profit of my life. 

For I think we may look upon our little private war with 
death somewhat in this light. If a man knows he will sooner or 
later be robbed upon a journey, he will have a bottle of the best 
in every inn, and look upon all his extravagancies as so much 
gained upon the thieves. And above all, where instead of simply 
1 A fabled creature half horse and half man. 



THE 01 SE IN FLOOD 6 1 

spending, he makes a profitable investment for some of his 
money, when it will be out of risk of loss. So every bit of brisk 
living, and above all when it is healthful, is just so much gained 
upon the wholesale filcher, death. We shall have the less in our 
pockets, the more in our stomachs, when he cries stand and de- 
liver. A swift stream is a favorite artifice of his, and one that 
brings him in a comfortable thing per annum; but when he and 
I come to settle our accounts, I shall whistle in his face for these 
hours upon the upper Oise. 

Towards afternoon we got fairly drunken with the sunshine 
and exhilaration of the pace. We could no longer contain our- 
selves and our content. The canoes were too small for us; we 
must be out and stretch ourselves on shore. And so in a green 
meadow we bestowed our limbs on the grass, and smoked 
deifying tobacco and proclaimed the world excellent. It was the 
last good hour of the day, and I dwell upon it with extreme com- 
placency. 

On one side of the valley, high upon the chalky summit of the 
hill, a plowman with his team appeared and disappeared at 
regular intervals. At each revelation he stood still for a few 
seconds against the sky: for all the world (as the Cigarette de- 
clared) like a toy Burns who had just plowed up the Mountain 
Daisy." He was the only living thing within view, unless we are 
to count the river. 

On the other side of the valley a group of red roofs and a 
belfry showed among the foliage. Thence some inspired bell- 
ringer made the afternoon musical on a chime of bells. There 
was something very sweet and taking in the air he played; and 
we thought we had never heard bells speak so intelligibly, or 
sing so melodiously, as these. It must have been to some such 
measure that the spinners and the young maids sang, ''Come 
away. Death," ^ in the Shakespearean Illyria.'^ There is so often 
a threatening note, something blatant and metallic, in the voice 
of bells, that I believe we have fully more pain than pleasure 



62 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

from hearing them; but these, as they sounded abroad, now 
high, now low, now with a plaintive cadence that caught the 
ear Hke the burden of a popular song, were always moderate and 
tunable, and seemed to fall in with the spirit of still, rustic 
places, like the noise of a waterfall or the babble of a rookery in 
spring. I could have asked the bell ringer for his blessing, good, 
sedate old man, who swung the rope so gently to the time of his 
meditations. I could have blessed the priest or the heritors,^ or 
whoever may be concerned with such affairs in France, who had 
left these sweet old bells to gladden the afternoon, and not held 
meetings, and made collections, and had their names repeatedly 
printed in the local paper, to rig up a peal of brand-new, brazen, 
Birmingham-hearted^ substitutes, who should bombard their 
sides to the provocation of a brand-new bell ringer, and fill the 
echoes of the valley with terror and riot. 

At last the bells ceased, and with their note the sun withdrew. 
The piece was at an end; shadow and silence possessed the valley 
of the Oise. We took to the paddle with glad hearts, like people 
who have sat out a noble performance, and return to work. The 
river was more dangerous here; it ran swifter, the eddies were 
more sudden and violent. All the way down we had had our fill 
of difficulties. Sometimes it was a weir ^ which could be shot, 
sometimes one so shallow and full of stakes that we must with- 
draw the boats from the water and carry them round. But the 
chief sort of obstacle was a consequence of the late high winds. 
Every two or three hundred yards a tree had fallen across the 
river and usually involved more than another in its fall. Often 
there was free water at the end, and we could steer round the 
leafy promontory and hear the water sucking and bubbling 
among the twigs. Often, again, when the tree reached from 
bank to bank, there was room, by lying close, to shoot through 

1 Proprietors or landholders in a Scottish parish. 

2 Birmingham, England, is noted for its metal manufactures. 
8 A fence of stakes set in a stream for taking fish. 



THE OISE IN FLOOD 63 

underneath, canoe and all. Sometimes it was necessary to get out 
upon the trunk itself and pull the boats across; and sometimes, 
where the stream was too impetuous for this, there was nothing 
for it but to land and "carry over." This made a fine series of 
accidents in the day's career, and kept us aware of ourselves. 

Shortly after our reembarkation, while I was leading by a long 
way, and still full of a noble, exulting spirit in honor of the sun, 
the swift pace, and the church bells, the river made one of its 
leonine pounces round a corner, and I was aware of another 
fallen tree within a stone cast. I had my backboard down in a 
trice, and aimed for a place where the trunk seemed high enough 
above the water, and the branches not too thick to let me slip 
below. When a man has just vowed eternal brotherhood with 
the universe, he is not in a temper to take great determinations 
coolly, and this, which might have been a very important de- 
termination for me, had not been taken under a happy star. The 
tree caught me about the chest, and while I was yet struggling 
to make less of myself and get through, the river took the matter 
out of my hands, and bereaved me of my boat. The Arethusa 
swung round broadside on, leaned over, ejected so much of me 
as still remained on board, and thus disencumbered, whipped 
under the tree, righted, and went merrily away downstream. 

I do not know how long it was before I scrambled on to the 
tree to which I was left clinging, but it was longer than I cared 
about. My thoughts were of a grave and almost somber char- 
acter, but I still clung to my paddle. The stream ran away with 
my heels as fast as I could pull up my shoulders, and I seemed, 
by the weight, to have all the water of the Oise in my trousers' 
pockets. You can never know, till you try it, what a dead pull 
a river makes against a man. Death himself had me by the 
heels, for this was his last ambuscado,^ and he must now join 
personally in the fray. And still I held to my paddle. At last 
I dragged myself on to my stomach on the trunk, and lay there 

^ Ambush. 



64 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

a breathless sop, with a mingled sense of humor and injustice. 
A poor figure I must have presented to Burns upon the hilltop 
with his team. But there was the paddle in my hand. On my 
tomb, if ever I have one, I mean to get these words inscribed: 
"He clung to his paddle." 

The Cigarette had gone past awhile before; for, as I might have 
observed, if I had been a little less pleased with the universe at 
the moment, there was a clear way round the tree top at the 
farther side. He had offered his services to haul me out, but as 
I was then already on my elbows, I had declined, and sent him 
downstream after the truant Arethusa. The stream was too 
rapid for a man to mount with one canoe, let alone two, upon his 
hands. So I crawled along the trunk to shore, and proceeded 
down the meadows by the riverside. I was so cold that my 
heart was sore. I had now an idea of my own, why the reeds so 
bitterly shivered. I could have given any of them a lesson. The 
Cigarette remarked facetiously, that he thought I was "taking 
exercise" as I drew near, until he made out for certain that I was 
only twittering with cold. I had a rubdown with a towel, and 
donned a dry suit from the India-rubber bag. But I was not 
my own man again for the rest of the voyage. I had a queasy ^ 
sense that I wore my last dry clothes upon my body. The 
struggle had tired me; and perhaps, whether I knew it or not, I 
was a little dashed in spirit. The devouring element in the 
universe had leaped out against me, in this green valley quick- 
ened by a running stream. The bells were all very pretty in 
their way, but I had heard some of the hollow notes of Pan's 
music. Would the wicked river drag me down by the heels, 
indeed? and look so beautiful all the time? Nature's good 
humor was only skin-deep after all. 

There was still a long way to go by the winding course of the 
stream, and darkness had fallen, and a late bell was ringing in 
Origny Sainte-Benoite, when we arrived. 
1 Uncomfortable. 



T 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 65 

ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE: A BY-DAY 

HE next day was Sunday, and the church bells had little 
rest; indeed I do not think I remember anywhere else so 
great a choice of services as were here offered to the devout. 
And while the bells made merry in the sunsliine, all the world 
with his dog was out shooting among the beets and colza. 

In the morning a hawker and his wife went down the street at 
a footpace, singing to a very slow, lamentable music, "O France, 
mes amours.^' ^ It brought everybody to the door; and when 
our landlady called in the man to buy the words, he had not a 
copy of them left. She was not the first nor the second who had 
been taken with the song. There is something very pathetic in 
the love of the French people, since the war, for dismal patriotic 
music making. I have watched a forester from Alsace while 
some one was singing ^^ Les malheurs de la France,^^ ^ at a bap- 
tismal party in the neighborhood of Fontainebleau." He arose 
from the table and took his son aside, close by where I was 
standing. "Listen, listen," he said, bearing on the boy's 
shoulder, "and remember this, my son." A little after he went 
out into the garden suddenly, and I could hear him sobbing in 
the darkness. 

The humiliation of their arms and the loss of Alsace and 
Lorraine " made a sore pull on the endurance of this sensitive 
people; and their hearts are still hot, not so much against 
Germany as against the Empire." In what other country will 
you find a patriotic ditty bring all the world into the street? 
But affiiction heightens love; and we shall never know we are 
Englishmen until we have lost India. Independent America is 
still the cross of my existence; I cannot think of Farmer George^ 
without abhorrence; and I never feel more warmly to my own 
land than when I see the stars and stripes, and remember what 
our empire might have been. 

1 "O Fjance, my loves." 2 «xhe griefs of France." 



66 ^ AN INLAND VOYAGE 

The hawker's little book, which I purchased, was a curious 
mixture. Side by side with the flippant, rowdy nonsense of the 
Paris music halls, there were many pastoral pieces, not without 
a touch of poetry, I thought, and instinct with the brave inde- 
pendence of the poorer class in France. There you might read 
how the woodcutter gloried in his ax, and the gardener scorned 
to be ashamed of liis spade. It was not very well written, this 
poetry of labor, but the pluck of the sentiment redeemed what 
was weak or wordy in the expression. The martial and the 
patriotic pieces, on the other hand, were tearful, womanish 
productions one and all. The poet had passed under the Cau- 
dine Forks; " he sang for an army visiting the tomb of its old 
renown, with arms reversed; and sang not of victory, but of 
death. There was a number in the hawker's collection called 
Consents Frangais,^ which may rank among the most dissuasive 
war lyrics on record. It would not be possible to fight at all in 
such a spirit. The bravest conscript would turn pale if such a 
ditty were struck up beside him on the morning of battle; and 
whole regiments would pile their arms to its tune. 

If Fletcher of Saltoun " is in the right about the influence of 
national songs, you would say France was come to a poor pass. 
But the thing will work its own cure, and a sound hearted and 
courageous people weary at length of sniveling over their dis- 
asters. Already Paul Deroulede " has written some manly 
military verses. There is not much of the trumpet note in them, 
perhaps, to stir a man's heart in his bosom; they lack the lyrical 
elation, and move slowly; but they are written in a grave, 
honorable, stoical spirit, which should carry soldiers far in a 
good cause. One feels as if one would like to trust Deroulede 
with something. It will be happy if he can so far inoculate his 
fellow countrymen that they may be trusted with their own 
future. And in the meantime, here is an antidote to "French 
Conscripts" and much other doleful versification. 
^ French conscripts — forced recruits. 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 67 

We had left the boats overnight in the custody of one whom 
we shall call Carnival. I did not properly catch his name, and 
perhaps that was not unfortunate for him, as I am not in a 
position to hand him down with honor to posterity. To this 
person's premises we strolled in the course of the day, and 
found quite a little deputation inspecting the canoes. There 
was a stout gentleman with a knowledge of the river, which he 
seemed eager to impart. There was a very elegant young 
gentleman in a black coat, with a smattering of English, who 
led the talk at once to the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. 
And then there were three handsome girls from fifteen to twenty; 
and an old gentleman in a blouse, with no teeth to speak of, and 
a strong country accent. Quite the pick of Origny, I should 
suppose. 

The Cigarette had some mysteries to perform with his rigging 
in the coach house; so I was left to do the parade single-handed. 
I found myself very much of a hero whether I would or not. 
The girls were full of little shudderings over the dangers of our 
journey. And I thought it would be ungallant not to take my 
cue from the ladies. My mishap of yesterday, told in an off- 
hand way, produced a deep sensation. It was Othello over 
again," with no less than three Desdemonas and a sprinkling of 
sympathetic senators in the background. Never were the canoes 
more flattered, or flattered more adroitly. 

"It is like a violin," cried one of the girls in an ecstasy. 

"I thank you for the word, mademoiselle," said I. "All the 
more since there are people who call out to me, that it is like a 
coffin." 

"O! but it is really like a violin. It is finished like a violin," 
she went on. 

"And polished like a violin," added a senator. 

"One has only to stretch the cords," concluded another, 
"and then tum-tumty-tum" — he imitated the result with 
spirit. 



68 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

Was not this a graceful little ovation? Where this people 
finds the secret of its pretty speeches, I cannot imagine; unless 
the secret should be no other than a sincere desire to please? 
But then no disgrace is attached in France to saying a thing 
neatly; whereas in England, to talk like a book is to give in one's 
resignation to society. 

The old gentleman in the blouse stole into the coach house, 
and somewhat irrelevantly informed the Cigarette that he was 
the father of the three girls and four more: quite an exploit for 
a Frenchman. 

"You are very fortunate," answered the Cigarette politely. 

And the old gentleman, having apparently gained his point, 
stole away again. 

We all got very friendly together. The girls proposed to 
start with us on the morrow, if you please ! And jesting apart, 
every one was anxious to know the hour of our departure. Now, 
when you are going to crawl into your canoe from a bad launch, 
a crowd, however friendly, is undesirable; and so we told them 
not before twelve, and mentally determined to be off by ten at 
latest. 

Towards evening, we went abroad again to post some letters. 
It was cool and pleasant; the long village was quite empty, ex- 
cept for one or two urchins who followed us as they might have 
followed a menagerie; the hills and the tree tops looked in from 
all sides through the clear air; and the bells were chiming for yet 
another service. 

Suddenly, we sighted the three girls standing, with a fourth 
sister, in front of a shop on the wide selvage ^ of the roadway. 
We had been very merry with them a little while ago, to be sure. 
But what was the etiquette of Origny? Had it been a country 
road, of course we should have spoken to them; but here, under 
the eyes of all the gossips, ought we to do even as much as bow? 
I consulted the Cigarette. 

"Look," said he. 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 69 

I looked. There were the four girls on the same spot; but now 
four backs were turned to us, very upright and conscious. 
Corporal Modesty had given the word of command, and the 
well-disciplined picket had gone right-about-face like a single 
person. They maintained this formation all the while we were 
in sight; but we heard them tittering among themselves, and the 
girl whom we had not met, laughed with open mouth, and even 
looked over her shoulder at the enemy. I wonder was it alto- 
gether modesty after all? or in part a sort of country provoca- 
tion? 

As we were returning to the inn, we beheld something floating 
in the ample field of golden evening sky, above the chalk cliffs 
and the trees that grow along their summit. It was too high up, 
too large, and too steady for a kite; and as it w^as dark, it could 
not be a star. For although a star were as black as ink and as 
rugged as a walnut, so amply does the sun bathe heaven with 
radiance, that it would sparkle like a point of light for us. The 
village was dotted with people with their heads in air; and the 
children were in a bustle all along the street and far up the 
straight road that climbs the hill, where we could still see them 
running in loose knots. It was a balloon, we learned, which had 
left Saint Quentin at half past five that evening. Mighty com- 
posedly the majority of the grown people took it. But we were 
English, and were soon running up the hill with the best. Being 
travelers ourselves in a small way, we would fain have seen these 
other travelers alight. 

The spectacle was over by the time we gained the top of the 
hill. All the gold had withered out of the sky, and the balloon 
had disappeared. Whither? I ask myself; caught up into the 
seventh heaven? ^ or come safely to land somewhere in that 
blue uneven distance, into which the roadway dipped and 
melted before our eyes? Probably the aeronauts were already 
warming themselves at a farm chimney, for they say it is cold 
in these unhomely regions of the air. The night fell swiftly. 



70 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

Roadside trees and disappointed sightseers, returning through 
the meadows, stood out in black against a margin of low red 
sunset. It was cheerfuller to face the other way, and so down 
the hill we went, with a full moon, the color of a melon, swinging 
high above the wooded valley, and the white cliffs behind us 
faintly reddened by the fire of the chalk kilns. 

The lamps were lighted, and the salads were being made in 
Origny Sainte-Benoite by the river. 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE : THE COMPANY AT TABLE 

ALTHOUGH we came late for dinner, the company at table 
treated us to sparkling wine. "That is how we are in 
France," said one. "Those who sit down with us are our 
friends." And the rest applauded. 

They were three altogether, and an odd trio to pass the Sunday 
with. 

Two of them were guests like ourselves, both men of the north. 
One ruddy, and of a full habit of body, with copious black hair 
and beard, the intrepid hunter of France, who thought nothing 
so small, not even a lark or a minnow, but he might vindicate 
his prowess by its capture. For such a great, healthy man, his 
hair flourishing like Samson's," his arteries running buckets of 
red blood, to boast of these infinitesimal exploits, produced a 
feeling of disproportion in the world, as when a steam hammer 
is set to cracking nuts. The other was a quiet, subdued person, 
blond and lymphatic and sad, with something the look of a Dane : 
"Tristes tttes de Danois!'^ ^ as Gaston Lafenestre ^ used to say. 

I must not let that name go by without a word for the best of 

all good fellows now gone down into the dust. We shall never 

again see Gaston in his forest costume — he was Gaston with 

all the world, in affection, not in disrespect — nor hear him wake 

1 "Sad Danish heads!" 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 7 1 

the echoes of Fontainebleau with the woodland horn. Never 
again shall his kind smile put peace among all races of artistic 
men, and make the Englishman at home in France. Never 
more shall the sheep, who were not more innocent at heart than 
he, sit all unconsciously for his industrious pencil. He died too 
early, at the very moment when he was beginning to put forth 
fresh sprouts, and blossom into something worthy of himself; 
and yet none who knew him will think he lived in vain. I never 
knew a man so little, for whom yet I had so much affection; and 
I find it a good test of others, how much they had learned to 
understand and value him. His was indeed a good influence in 
life w^hile he was still among us; he had a fresh laugh, it did you 
good to see him; and however sad he may have been at heart, 
he always bore a bold and cheerful countenance, and took 
fortune's worst as it were the showers of spring. But now^ his 
mother sits alone by the side of Fontainebleau woods, where he 
gathered mushrooms in his hardy and penurious youth. 

Many of his pictures found their way across the channel: be- 
sides those which were stolen, w^hen a dastardly Yankee left him 
alone in London with tw^o English pence, and perhaps twice as 
many words of English. If anyone w^ho reads these lines should 
have a scene of sheep, in the manner of Jacques," with this fine 
creature's signature, let him tell himself that one of the kindest 
and bravest of men has lent a hand to decorate his lodging. 
There may be better pictures in the National Gallery,'* but not 
a painter among the generations had a better heart. Precious 
in the sight of the Lord of humanity, the Psalms tell us, is the 
death of his saints.'* It had need to be precious; for it is very 
costly, when by the stroke, a mother is left desolate, and the 
peacemaker, and peace looker, of a whole society is laid in the 
ground with Cassar and the Twelve Apostles. 

There is something lacking among the oaks of Fontainebleau; 
and when the dessert comes in at Barbizon, people look to the 
door for a figure that is gone. 



72 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

The third of our companions at Origny was no less a person 
than the landlady's husband; not properly the landlord, since he 
worked himself in a factory during the day, and came to his own 
house at evening as a guest; a man worn to skin and bone by 
perpetual excitement, with baldish head, sharp features, and 
swift, shining eyes. On Saturday, describing some paltry ad- 
venture at a duck hunt, he broke a plate into a score of frag- 
ments. Whenever he made a remark, he would look all round 
the table, with his chin raised, and a spark of green light in 
either eye, seeking approval. His wife appeared now and again 
in the doorway of the room, where she was superintending 
dinner, with a "Henri, you forget yourself," or a "Henri, you 
can surely talk without making such a noise." Indeed, that was 
what the honest fellow could not do. On the most trifling 
matter, his eyes kindled, his fist visited the table, and his voice 
rolled abroad in changeful thunder. I never saw such a petard ^ 
of a man; I think the devil was in him. He had two favorite 
expressions: "it is logical," or illogical as the case might be: and 
this other, thrown out with a certain bravado, as a man might 
unfurl a banner, at the beginning of many a long and sonorous 
story: "I am a proletarian,^ you see." Indeed, we saw it very 
well. God forbid, that ever I should find him handling a gun in 
Paris streets. That will not be a good moment for the general 
public. 

I thought his two phrases very much represented the good and 
evil of his class, and to some extent of his country. It is a strong 
thing to say what one is, and not be ashamed of it; even although 
it be in doubtful taste to repeat the statement too often in one 
evening. I should not admire it in a duke, of course; but as 
times go, the trait is honorable in a workman. On the other 
hand, it is not at all a strong thing to put one's reliance upon 
logic; and our own logic particularly, for it is generally wrong. 

1 A case containing an explosive, used in the olden time to blow in gates 
and walls. ^ ^ member of the poorest and lowest class of people. 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 73 

We never know where we are to end, if once we begin following 
words or doctors. There is an upright stock in a man's own 
heart, that is trustier than any syllogism; and the eyes, and the 
sympathies and appetites, know a thing or two that have never 
yet been stated in controversy. Reasons are as plentiful as 
blackberries; " and like fisticuffs, they serve impartially with all 
sides. Doctrines do not stand or fall by their proofs, and are 
only logical in so far as they are cleverly put. An able contro- 
versialist no more than an able general demonstrates the justice 
of his cause. But France is all gone wandering after one or two 
big words; it will take some time before they can be satisfied 
that they are no more than words, however big; and when once 
that is done, they will perhaps find logic less diverting. 

The conversation opened with details of the day's shooting. 
When all the sportsmen of a village shoot over the village 
territory pro indiviso,^ it is plain that many questions of etiquette 
and priority must arise. 

"Here now," cried the landlord, brandishing a plate, ''here is 
a field of beetroot. Well. Here am I then. I advance, do I 
not? Eh hien! sacristi,^' ^ and the statement, waxing louder, 
rolls off into a reverberation of oaths, the speaker glaring about 
for sympathy, and everybody nodding his head to him in the 
name of peace. 

The ruddy Northman told some tales of his own prowess in 
keeping order: notably one of a Marquis. 

''Marquis," I said, "if you take another step I fire upon you. 
You have committed a dirtiness. Marquis." 

Whereupon, it appeared, the Marquis touched his cap and 
withdrew. 

The landlord applauded noisily. "It was well done," he said. 
"He did all that he could. He admitted he was wrong." And 
then oath upon oath. He was no marquis-lover either, but he 
had a sense of justice in him, this proletarian host of ours. 
1 As undivided, in common. ^ "Well! thunder!" 



74 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

From the matter of hunting, the talk veered into a general 
comparison of Paris and the country. The proletarian beat the 
table like a drum in praise of Paris. "What is Paris? Paris is 
the cream of France. There are no Parisians: it is you and I and 
everybody who are Parisians. A man has eighty chances per 
cent to get on in the world in Paris." And he drew a vivid 
sketch of the workman in a den no bigger than a dog hutch, 
making articles that were to go all over the world. "Eh Men, 
quoi, c^est magnifique, qa!'^ ^ cried he. 

The sad Northman interfered in praise of a peasant's life; he 
thought Paris bad for men and women; "centraHzation," said 
he — 

But the landlord was at his throat in a moment. It was all 
logical, he showed him; and all magnificent. " What a spectacle! 
What a glance for an eye!" And the dishes reeled upon the 
table under a cannonade of blows. 

Seeking to make peace, I threw in a word in praise of the 
liberty of opinion in France. I could hardly have shot more 
amiss. There was an instant silence, and a great wagging of 
significant heads. They did not fancy the subject, it was plain; 
but they gave me to understand that the sad Northman was a 
martyr on account of his views. ''Ask him a bit," said they. 
"Just ask him." 

"Yes, sir," said he in his quiet way, answering me, although 
I had not spoken, " I am afraid there is less liberty of opinion in 
France than you may imagine." And with that he dropped his 
eyes, and seemed to consider the subject at an end. 

Our curiosity was mightily excited at this. How, or why, or 
when, was this lymphatic bagman martyred? We concluded at 
once it was on some religious question, and brushed up our 
memories of the Inquisition," which were principally drawn from 
Poe's horrid story," and the sermon in Tristram Shandy,^ I be- 
lieve. 

1 "Well, now, that is magnificent!" 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 75 

On the morrow we had an opportunity of going further into 
the question; for when we rose very early to avoid a sympathiz- 
ing deputation at our departure, we found the hero up before 
us. He was breaking his fast on white wine and raw onions, in 
order to keep up the character of martyr, I conclude. We had 
a long conversation, and made out what we wanted in spite of 
his reserve. But here was a truly curious circumstance. It 
seems possible for two Scotchmen and a Frenchman to discuss 
during a long half hour, and each nationality have a different 
idea in view throughout. It was not till the very end that we 
discovered his heresy had been political, or that he suspected 
our mistake. The terms and spirit in which he spoke of his 
political beliefs were, in our eyes, suited to religious beliefs. And 
vice versd. 

Nothing could be more characteristic of the two countries. 
Politics are the religion of France; as Nanty Ewart " would have 

said, ''A d d bad religion;" while we, at home, keep most of 

our bitterness for little differences about a hymn book, or a 
Hebrew word which, perhaps, neither of the parties can trans- 
late. And perhaps the misconception is typical of many others 
that may never be cleared up ; not only between people of differ- 
ent race, but between those of different sex. 

As for our friend's martyrdom, he was a Communist," or per- 
haps only a Communard," which is a very different thing; and 
had lost one or more situations in consequence. I think he had 
also been rejected in marriage; but perhaps he had a sentimental 
way of considering business which deceived me. He was a mild, 
gentle creature, anyway; and I hope he has got a better situa- 
tion, and married a more suitable wife since then. 



76 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

DOWN THE OISE: TO MOY 

CARNIVAL notoriously cheated us at first. Finding us 
easy in our ways, he regretted having let us off so cheaply; 
and taking me aside, told me a cock-and-bull ^ story with the 
moral of another five francs for the narrator. The thing was 
palpably absurd; but I paid up, and at once dropped all friend- 
liness of manner, and kept him in his place as an inferior with 
freezing British dignity. He saw in a moment that he had gone 
too far, and killed a willing horse; his face fell; I am sure he 
would have refunded if he could only have thought of a decent 
pretext. He wished me to drink with him, but I would none of 
his drinks. He grew pathetically tender in his professions; but 
I walked beside him in silence or answered him in stately cour- 
tesies; and when we got to the landing place, passed the word in 
English slang to the Cigarette. 

In spite of the false scent we had thrown out the day before, 
there must have been fifty people about the bridge. We were 
as pleasant as we could be with all but Carnival. We said 
good-by, shaking hands with the old gentleman who knew the 
river and the young gentleman who had a smattering of English; 
but never a word for Carnival. Poor Carnival, here was a 
humiliation. He who had been so much identified with the 
canoes, who had given orders in our name, who had shown off 
the boats and even the boatmen like a private exhibition of his 
own, to be now so publicly shamed by the lions of his caravan! 
I never saw anybody look more crestfallen than he. He hung 
in the background, coming timidly forward ever and again as he 
thought he saw some symptom of a relenting humor, and falling 
hurriedly back when he encountered a cold stare. Let us hope 
it will be a lesson to him. 

I would not have mentioned Carnival's peccadillo had not the 
thing been so uncommon in France. This, for instance, was the 

^ Extravagant. 



DOWN THE OISE 77 

only case of dishonesty or even sharp practice in our whole 
voyage. We talk very much about our honesty in England. It 
is a good rule to be on your guard wherever you hear great pro- 
fessions about a very little piece of virtue. If the English could 
only hear how they are spoken of abroad, they might confine 
themselves for a while to remedying the fact; and perhaps even 
when that was done, give us fewer of their airs. 

The young ladies, the graces of Origny, were not present at 
our start, but when we got round to the second bridge, behold 
it was black with sight-seers! We were loudly cheered, and for 
a good way below, young lads and lasses ran along the bank still 
cheering. What with current and paddling, we were flashing 
along like swallows. It was no joke to keep up with us upon the 
woody shore. But the girls picked up their skirts, as if they were 
sure they had good ankles, and followed until their breath was 
out. The last to weary were the three graces and a couple of 
companions; and just as they too had had enough, the foremost 
of the three leaped upon a tree stump and kissed her hand to 
the canoeists. Not Diana ^ herself, although this was more of 
a Venus " after all, could have done a graceful thing more grace- 
fully. "Come back again!" she cried; and all the others echoed 
her; and the hills about Origny repeated the words, "Come 
back." But the river had us round an angle in a twinkling, and 
we were alone with the green trees and running water. 

Come back? There is no coming back, young ladies, on the 
impetuous stream of hfe. 

The merchant bows unto the seaman's star, 
The plowman from the sun his season takes. 

And we must all set our pocket watches by the clock of fate. 
There is a headlong, forthright tide, that bears away man with 
his fancies like a straw, and runs fast in time and space. It is 
full of curves like this, your winding river of the Oise; and 
lingers and returns in pleasant pastorals; and yet, rightly thought 



78 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

upon, never returns at all. For though it should revisit the same 
acre of meadow in the same hour, it will have made an ample 
sweep between whiles; many little streams will have fallen in; 
many exhalations risen towards the sun; and even although it 
were the same acre, it will no more be the same river of Oise. 
And thus, O graces of Origny, although the wandering fortune 
of my life should carry me back again to where you await 
death's whistle by the river, that will not be the old I who walks 
the street; and those wives and mothers, say, will those be you? 
There was never any mistake about the Oise, as a matter of 
fact. In these upper reaches it was still in a prodigious hurry 
for the sea. It ran so fast and merrily, through all the windings 
of its channel, that I strained my thumb, fighting with the rapids, 
and had to paddle all the rest of the way with one hand turned 
up. Sometimes, it had to serve mills; and being still a little 
river, ran very dry and shallow in the meanwhile. We had to 
put our legs out of the boat, and shove ourselves off the sand of 
the bottom with our feet. And still it went on its way singing 
among the poplars, and making a green valley in the world. 
After a good woman, and a good book, and tobacco, there is 
nothing so agreeable on earth as a river. I forgave it its attempt 
on my life; which was after all one part owing to the unruly 
winds of heaven that had blown down the tree, one -part to my 
own mismanagement, and only a third part to the river itself, 
and that, not out of malice, but from its great preoccupation 
over its business of getting to the sea. A difficult business, too; 
for the detours it had to make are not to be counted. The 
geographers seem to have given up the attempt; for I found no 
map represent the infinite contortion of its course. A fact will 
say more than any of them. After we had been some hours, 
three if I mistake not, flitting by the trees at this smooth, break- 
neck gallop, when we came upon a hamlet and asked where we 
were, we had got no farther than four kilometers (say two miles 
and a half) from Origny. If it were not for the honor of the 



DOWN THE OISE 79 

thing (in the Scotch saying), we might ahnost as well have been 
standing still. 

We lunched on a meadow inside a parallelogram of poplars. 
The leaves danced and prattled in the wind all round about us. 
The river hurried on meanwhile, and seemed to chide at our de- 
lay. Little wt cared. The river knew where it w^as going; not 
so we: the less our hurry, where we found good quarters and a 
pleasant theater for a pipe. At that hour, stockbrokers were 
shouting in Paris Bourse ^ for two or three per cent; but we 
minded them as little as the sliding stream, and sacrificed a 
hecatomb " of minutes to the gods of tobacco and digestion. 
Hurry is the resource of the faithless. Where a man can trust 
his own heart, and those of his friends, to-morrow is as good as 
to-day. And if he die in the meanwhile, why then, there he dies, 
and the question is solved. 

We had to take to the canal in the course of the afternoon; 
because, where it crossed the river, there was, not a bridge, but 
a siphon.^ If it had not been for an excited fellow on the bank, 
we should have paddled right into the siphon, and thenceforward 
not paddled any more. We met a man, a gentleman, on the 
towpath, who was much interested in our cruise. And I was 
witness to a strange seizure of lying suffered by the Cigarette; 
who, because his knife came from Norway, narrated all sorts of 
adventures in that country, where he has never been. He was 
quite feverish at the end, and pleaded demoniacal possession. 

Moy (pronounce Moy) was a pleasant Httle village, gathered 
round a chateau in a moat. The air w^as perfumed with hemp 
from neighboring fields. At the Golden Sheep, we found excel- 
lent entertainment. German shells from the siege of La Fere,** 
Niirnberg figures,^ goldfish in a bowl, and all manner of knick- 
knacks, embelHshed the public room. The landlady was a stout, 
plain, shortsighted, motherly body, with something not far 

^ The stock exchange. 

2 A tube through which the river was carried xmder the canal. 



8o AN INLAND VOYAGE 

short of a genius for cookery. She had a guess of her excellence 
herself. After every dish was sent in, she would come and look 
on at the dinner for a while, with puckered, blinking eyes. 
"Cest bon, n'est-ce pas ? " ^ she would say; and when she had re- 
ceived a proper answer, she disappeared into the kitchen. That 
common French dish, partridge and cabbages, became a new 
thing in my eyes at the Golden Sheep; and many subsequent 
dinners have bitterly disappointed me in consequence. Sweet 
was our rest in the Golden Sheep at Moy. 



LA FERE OF CURSED MEMORY 

WE lingered in Moy a good part of the day, for we were 
fond of being philosophical, and scorned long journeys 
and early starts on principle. The place, moreover, invited to re- 
pose. People in elaborate shooting costumes sallied from the 
chateau with guns and game bags; and this was a pleasure in 
itself, to remain behind while these elegant pleasure seekers took 
the first of the morning. In this way, all the world may be an 
aristocrat, and play the duke among marquises, and the reigning 
monarch among dukes, if he will only outvie them in tran- 
quillity. An imperturbable demeanor comes from perfect pa- 
tience. Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but 
go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like 
a clock during a thunderstorm. 

We made a very short day of it to La Fere; but the dusk was 
falling, and a small rain had begun before we stowed the boats. 
La Fere is a fortified town in a plain, and has two belts of ram- 
part. Between the first and the second, extends a region of 
waste land and cultivated patches. Here and there along the 
wayside were posters forbidding trespass in the name of military 
1 "It is good, isn't it?" 



LA FERE OF CURSED MEMORY 8l 

engineering. At last, a second gateway admitted us to the town 
itself. Lighted windows looked gladsome, whiffs of comfortable 
cookery came abroad upon the air. The town was full of the 
military reserve, out for the French autumn maneuvers, and 
the reservists ^ walked speedily and wore their formidable 
greatcoats. It was a fine night to be within doors over dinner, 
and hear the rain upon the windows. 

The Cigarette and I could not sufficiently congratulate each 
other on the prospect, for we had been told there was a capital 
inn at La Fere. Such a dinner as we were going to eat! such 
beds as we were to sleep in ! — and all the while the rain raining 
on houseless folk over all the poplared countryside! It made 
our mouths water. The inn bore the name of some woodland 
animal, stag, or hart, or hind, I forget which. But I shall never 
forget how spacious and how eminently habitable it looked as 
we drew near. The carriage entry was lighted up, not by inten- 
tion, but from the mere superfluity of fire and candle in the house. 
A rattle of many dishes came to our ears; we sighted a great 
field of tablecloth; the kitchen glowed like a forge and smelt like 
a garden of things to eat. 

Into this, the inmost shrine, and physiological heart, of a 
hostelry, with all its furnaces in action, and all its dressers 
charged with viands, you are now to suppose us making our 
triumphal entry, a pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a 
limp India-rubber bag upon his arm. I do not believe I have a 
sound view of that kitchen; I saw it through a sort of glory: 
but it seemed to me crowded with the snowy caps of cookmen, 
who all turned round from their saucepans and looked at us with 
surprise. There was no doubt about the landlady, however: 
there she was, heading her army, a flushed, angry woman, full 
of affairs. Her I asked politely — too politely, thinks the 
Cigarette — if we could have beds, she surveying us coldly from 
head to foot. 

^ Soldiers belonging to the military reserve. 



82 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

"You will find beds in the suburb," she remarked. ''We are 
too busy for the Hke of you." 

If we could make an entrance, change our clothes, and order 
a bottle of wine, I felt sure we could put things right; so said I: 
" If we cannot sleep, we may at least dine," — and was for de- 
positing my bag. 

What a terrible convulsion of nature was that which followed 
in the landlady's face! She made a run at us, and stamped her 
foot. 

" Out with you — out of the door! " she screeched. ^^Sortez 1 
sortez 1 sortez par la porte /" 

I do not know how it happened, but next moment we were out 
in the rain and darkness, and I was cursing before the carriage 
entry like a disappointed mendicant. Where were the boating 
men of Belgium? where the Judge and his good wines? and where 
the graces of Origny? Black, black was the night after the firelit 
kitchen; but what was that to the blackness in our hearts? This 
was not the first time that I have been refused a lodging. Often 
and often have I planned what I should do if such a misadven- 
ture happened to me again. And nothing is easier to plan. But 
to put in execution, with the heart boiling at the indignity? Try 
it; try it only once; and tell me what you did. 

It is all very fine to talk about tramps and morality. Six 
hours of police surveillance (such as I have had), or one brutal 
rejection from an inn door, change your views upon the subject 
like a course of lectures. As long as you keep in the upper re- 
gions, with all the world bowing to you as you go, social arrange- 
ments have a very handsome air; but once get under the wheels, 
and you wish society were at the devil. I will give most respect- 
able men a fortnight of such a life, and then I will offer them two- 
pence for what remains of their morality. 

For my part, when I was turned out of the Stag^ or the Hind^ 
or whatever it was, I would have set the temple of Diana on 
fire,^ if it had been handy. There was no crime complete enough 



LA FERE OF CURSED MEMORY 83 

to express my disapproval of human institutions. As for the 
Cigarette f I never knew a man so altered. "We have been taken 
for peddlers again," said he. " Good God, what it must be to be 
a peddler in reality!" He particularized a complaint for every 
joint in the landlady's body. Timon" was a philanthropist along- 
side of him. And then, when he was at the top of his maledic- 
tory bent, he would suddenly break away and begin whimper- 
ingly to commiserate the poor. "I hope to God," he said, — 
and I trust the prayer was answered, — "that I shall never be 
uncivil to a peddler." Was this the imperturbable Cigarette? 
This, this was he. O change beyond report, thought, or belief! 

Meantime the heaven wept upon our heads; and the windows 
grew brighter as the night increased in darkness. We trudged in 
and out of La Fere streets; we saw shops, and private houses 
where people were copiously dining; we saw stables where 
carters' nags had plenty of fodder and clean straw; we saw no end 
of reservists, who were very sorry for themselves this wet night, I 
doubt not, and yearned for their country homes; but had they not 
each man his place in La Fere barracks? And we, what had we? 

There seemed to be no other inn in the whole town. People 
gave us directions, which we followed as best we could, generally 
with the effect of bringing us out again upon the scene of our 
disgrace. We were very sad people indeed by the time we had 
gone all over La Fere; and the Cigarette had already made up his 
mind to lie under a poplar and sup off a loaf of bread. But 
right at the other end, the house next the town gate was full of 
light and bustle. " Bazin, aubergiste, loge a pied,^' ^ was the 
sign. ^'A la Croix de Malted ^ There were we received. 

The room was full of noisy reservists drinking and smoking; 
and we were very glad indeed when the drums and bugles began 
to go about the streets, and one and all had to snatch shakoes ^ 
and be off for the barracks. 

1 "Bazin, innkeeper, lodges pedestrians." 

2" At the sign of the Maltese cross." ^ Plumed military hats. 



84 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

Bazin was a tall man, running to fat: soft-spoken, with a 
delicate, gentle face. We asked him to share our wine; but he 
excused himself, having pledged reservists all day long. This was 
a very different type of the workman-innkeeper from the bawling 
disputatious fellow at Origny. He also loved Paris, where he 
had worked as a decorative painter in his youth. There were 
such opportunities for self-instruction there, he said. And if 
anyone has read Zola's " description of the workman's marriage 
party visiting the Louvre, they would do well to have heard 
Bazin by way of antidote. He had delighted in the museums in 
his youth. "One sees there little miracles of work," he said; 
"that is what makes a good workman; it kindles a spark." We 
asked him how he managed in La Fere. "I am married," he 
said, "and I have my pretty children. But frankly, it is no life 
at all. From morning to night I pledge a pack of good enough 
fellows who know nothing." 

It faired as the night went on, and the moon came out of the 
clouds. We sat in front of the door, talking softly with Bazin. 
At the guardhouse opposite, the guard was being for ever 
turned out, as trains of field artillery kept clanking in out of the 
night, or patrols of horsemen trotted by in their cloaks. Madame 
Bazin came out after a while; she was tired with her day's work, 
I suppose; and she nestled up to her husband and laid her head 
upon his breast. He had his arm about her and kept gently 
patting her on the shoulder. I think Bazin was right, and he 
was really married. Of how few people can the same be 
said! 

Little did the Bazins know how much they served us. We 
were charged for candles, for food and drink, and for the beds 
we slept in. But there was nothing in the bill for the husband's 
pleasant talk; nor for the pretty spectacle of their married life. 
And there was yet another item uncharged. For these people's 
politeness really set us up again in our own esteem. We had a 
thirst for consideration; the sense of insult was still hot in our 



DOWN THE OISE 85 

spirits; and civil usage seemed to restore us to our position in the 
world. 

How little we pay our way in life! Although we have our 
purses continually in our hand the better part of service goes 
still unrewarded. But I like to fancy that a grateful spirit gives 
as good as it gets. Perhaps the Bazins knew how much I liked 
them ? perhaps they also were healed of some slights by the 
thanks that I gave them in my manner? 



DOWN THE OISE: THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY 

BELOW La Fere the river runs through a piece of open 
pastoral country; green, opulent, loved by breeders; called 
the Golden Valley. In wide sweeps, and with a swift and equable 
gallop, the ceaseless stream of water visits and makes green the 
fields. Kine, and horses, and little humorous donkeys browse 
together in the meadows, and come down in troops to the river- 
side to drink. They make a strange feature in the landscape; 
above all when startled, and you see them galloping to and fro, 
with their incongruous forms and faces. It gives a feeling as of 
great, unfenced pampas, and the herds of wandering nations. 
There were hills in the distance upon either hand; and on one 
side the river sometimes bordered on the wooded spurs of Coucy 
and St. Gobain. 

The artillery were practicing at La Fere; and soon the cannon 
of heaven joined in that loud play. Two continents of cloud 
met and exchanged salvos ^ overhead; while all round the hori- 
zon we could see sunshine and clear air upon the hills. What 
with the guns and the thunder, the herds were all frightened in 
the Golden Valley. We could see them tossing their heads, and 
running to and fro in timorous indecision; and when they had 
made up their minds, and the donkey followed the horse, and the 

1 Salutes. 



86 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

cow was after the donkey, we could hear their hoofs thundering 
abroad over the meadows. It had a martial sound, like cavalry 
charges. And altogether, as far as the ears are concerned, we 
had a very rousing battle piece performed for our amusement. 

At last the guns and the thunder dropped off; the sun shone 
on the wet meadows; the air was scented with the breath of re- 
joicing trees and grass; and the river kept unweariedly carrying 
us on at its best pace. There was a manufacturing district about 
Chauny; and after that the banks grew so high that they hid the 
adjacent country, and we could see nothing but clay sides, and 
one willow after another. Only, here and there, we passed by a 
village or a ferry, and some wondering child upon the bank would 
stare after us until we turned the corner. I dare say we con- 
tinued to paddle in that child's dreams for many a night after. 

Sun and shower alternated like day and night, making the 
hours longer by their variety. When the showers were heavy I 
could feel each drop striking through my jersey to my warm 
skin; and the accumulation of small shocks put me nearly beside 
myself. I decided I should buy a mackintosh at Noyon. It is 
nothing to get wet; but the misery of these individual pricks of 
cold all over my body at the same instant of time, made me flail 
the water with my paddle like a madman. The Cigarette was 
greatly amused by these ebullitions. It gave him something 
else to look at, besides clay banks and willows. 

All the time, the river stole away like a thief in straight places, 
or swung round corners with an eddy; the willows nodded and 
were undermined all day long; the clay banks tumbled in; the 
Oise, which had been so many centuries making the Golden 
Valley, seemed to have changed its fancy, and be bent upon 
undoing its performance. What a number of things a river does, 
by simply following Gravity in the innocence of its heart! 



NOYON CATHEDRAL 87 



NOYON CATHEDRAL 

NOYON stands about a mile from the river, in a little plain 
surrounded by wooded hills, and entirely covers an emi- 
nence with its tile roofs, surmounted by a long, straight-backed 
cathedral with two stiff towers. As we got into the town, the 
tile roofs seemed to tumble uphill one upon another, in the 
oddest disorder; but for all their scrambling, they did not attain 
above the knees of the cathedral, which stood, upright and 
solemn, over all. As the streets drew near to this presiding 
genius, through the market place under the Hotel de Ville,^ they 
grew emptier and more composed. Blank walls and shuttered 
windows were turned to the great edifice, and grass grew on the 
white causeway. "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the 
place whereon thou standest is holy ground." " The Hotel du 
Nord, nevertheless, lights its secular tapers within a stonecast 
of the church; and we had the superb east end before our eyes all 
morning from the window of our bedroom. I have seldom 
looked on the east end of a church with more complete sympathy. 
As it flanges out in three wide terraces, and settles down broadly 
on the earth, it looks like the poop ^ of some great old battleship. 
Hollow-backed buttresses carry vases, which figure for the stern 
lanterns. There is a roll in the ground, and the towers just 
appear above the pitch of the roof, as though the good ship were 
bowing lazily over an Atlantic swell. At any moment it might 
be a hundred feet away from you, climbing the next billow. At 
any moment a window might open, and some old admiral thrust 
forth a cocked hat, and proceed to take an observation. The old 
admirals sail the sea no longer; the old ships of battle are all 
broken up, and live only in pictures; but this, that was a church 
before ever they were thought upon, is still a church, and makes 
as brave an appearance by the Oise. The cathedral and the 
1 Town hall. ^ Stern or after part of a ship. 



88 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

river are probably the two oldest things for miles around; and 
certainly they have both a grand old age. 

The sacristan ^ took us to the top of one of the towers, and 
showed us the five bells hanging in their loft. From above, the 
town was a tessellated pavement of roofs and gardens; the old 
line of rampart was plainly traceable; and the sacristan pointed 
out to us, far across the plain, in a bit of gleaming sky between 
two clouds, the towers of Chateau Coucy. 

I find I never weary of great churches. It is my favorite kind 
of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired 
as when it made a cathedral : a thing as single and specious as a 
statue to the first glance, and yet, on examination, as lively and 
interesting as a forest in detail. The height of spires cannot be 
taken by trigonometry; they measure absurdly short, but how 
tall they are to the admiring eye! And where we have so many 
elegant proportions, growing one out of the other, and all to- 
gether into one, it seems as if proportion transcended itself and 
became something different and more imposing. I could never 
fathom how a man dares to lift up his voice to preach in a 
cathedral. What is he to say that will not be an anticlimax? 
For though I have heard a considerable variety of sermons, I 
never yet heard one that was so expressive as a cathedral. 'Tis 
the best preacher itself, and preaches day and night; not only 
telling you of man's art and aspirations in the past, but convict- 
ing your own soul of ardent sympathies; or rather, like all good 
preachers, it sets you preaching to yourself; — and every man 
is his own doctor of divinity in the last resort. 

As I sat outside of the hotel in the course of the afternoon, the 
sweet groaning thunder of the organ floated out of the church 
like a summons. I was not averse, liking the theater so well, to 
sit out an act or two of the play, but I could never rightly make 
out the nature of the service I beheld. Four or five priests and 
as many choristers were singing Miserere " before the high altar 
1 The officer in charge of the church. 



NOYON CATHEDRAL 89 

when I went in. There was no congregation but a few old 
women on chairs and old men kneeling on the pavement. After 
a while a long train of young girls, walking two and two, each 
with a lighted taper in her hand, and all dressed in black with a 
white veil, came from behind the altar and began to descend the 
nave; the four first carrying a Virgin and child upon a table. 
The priests and choristers arose from their knees and followed 
after singing ''Ave Mary" as they went. In this order they 
made the circuit of the cathedral, passing twice before me where 
I leaned against a pillar. The priest who seemed of most con- 
sequence was a strange, down-looking old man. He kept 
mumbling prayers with his lips; but as he looked upon me dark- 
ling, it did not seem as if prayer were uppermost in his heart. 
Two others, who bore the burden of the chant, were stout, 
brutal, military-looking men of forty, with bold, overfed eyes; 
they sang with some lustiness, and trolled forth "Ave Mary " 
like a garrison catch. The little girls were timid and grave. As 
they footed slowly up the aisle, each one took a moment's glance 
at the Englishman; and the big nun who played marshal fairly 
stared him out of countenance. As for the choristers, from first 
to last they misbehaved as only boys can misbehave; and cruelly 
marred the performance with their antics. 

I understood a great deal of the spirit of what went on. In- 
deed it would be difficult not to understand the Miserere, which 
I take to be the composition of an atheist. If it ever be a good 
thing to take such despondency to heart, the Miserere is the 
right music and a cathedral a fit scene. So far I am at one with 
the Catholics: — an odd name for them, after all ? But w^hy, in 
God's name, these holiday choristers? why these priests who 
steal wandering looks about the congregation while they feign 
to be at prayer? why this fat nun, who rudely arranges her pro- 
cession and shakes delinquent virgins by the elbow? why this 
spitting, and snuffing, and forgetting of keys, and the thousand 
and one little misadventures that disturb a frame of mind, 



90 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

laboriously edified with chants and organings? In any play- 
house reverend fathers may see what can be done with a little 
art, and how, to move high sentiments, it is necessary to drill 
the supernumeraries and have every stool in its proper place. 

One other circumstance distressed me. I could bear a Miserere 
myself, having had a good deal of open-air exercise of late; but 
I wished the old people somewhere else. It was neither the right 
sort of music nor the right sort of divinity for men and women 
who have come through most accidents by this time, and prob- 
ably have an opinion of their own upon the tragic element in 
life. A person up in years can generally do his own Miserere for 
himself; although I notice that such a one often prefers Jubilate 
Deo " for his ordinary singing. On the whole, the most religious 
exercise for the aged is probably to recall their own experience; 
so many friends dead, so many hopes disappointed, so many 
slips and stumbles, and withal so many bright days and smiling 
providences ; there is surely the matter of a very eloquent sermon 
in all this. 

On the whole, I was greatly solemnized. In the little pictorial 
map of our whole Inland Voyage, which my fancy still preserves, 
and sometimes unrolls for the amusement of odd moments, 
Noyon cathedral figures on a most preposterous scale, and must 
be nearly as large as a department. I can still see the faces of 
the priests as if they were at my elbow, and hear Ave Maria, or a 
pro nobis ^ sounding through the church. All Noyon is blotted 
out for me by these superior memories ; and I do not care to say 
more about the place. It was but a stack of brown roofs at the 
best, where I believe people live very reputably in a quiet way; 
but the shadow of the church falls upon it when the sun is low, 
and the five bells are heard in all quarters, telling that the organ 
has begun. If ever I join the church of Rome, I shall stipulate 
to be Bishop of Noyon on the Oise. 



DOWN THE OISE 91 



DOWN THE OISE: TO COMPIEGNE 

THE most patient people grow weary at last with being con- 
tinually wetted with rain; except of course in the Scotch 
Highlands, where there are not enough fine intervals to point the 
difference. That was like to be our case, the day we left Noyon. 
I remember nothing of the voyage; it was nothing but clay banks, 
and willows, and rain; incessant, pitiless, beating rain: until we 
stopped to lunch at a little inn at Pimprez, where the canal ran 
very near the river. We were so sadly drenched that the land- 
lady lit a few sticks in the chimney for our comfort; there we sat 
in a steam of vapor, lamenting our concerns. The husband 
donned a game bag and strode out to shoot; the wife sat in a far 
corner watching us. I think we were worth looking at. We 
grumbled over the misfortune of La Fere; we forecast other La 
Feres in the future, — although things went better with the 
Cigarette for spokesman; he had more aplomb altogether than I; 
and a dull, positive way of approaching a landlady that carried 
off the India-rubber bags. Talking of La Fere, put us talking of 
the reservists. 

"Reservery," said he, "seems a pretty mean way to spend 
one's autumn holiday." 

"About as mean," returned I, dejectedly, "as canoeing." 

"These gentlemen travel for their pleasure?" asked the land- 
lady, with unconscious irony. 

It was too much. The scales fell from our eyes. Another wet 
day, it was determined, and we put the boats into the train. 

The weather took the hint. That was our last wetting. The 
afternoon faired up: grand clouds still voyaged in the sky, but 
now singly, and with a depth of blue around their path; and a 
sunset, in the daintiest rose and gold, inaugurated a thick night 
of stars and a month of unbroken weather. At the same time, 
the river began to give us a better outlook into the country. 



92 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

The banks were not so high, the willows disappeared from along 
the margin, and pleasant hills stood all along its course and 
marked their profile on the sky. 

In a little while, the canal, coming to its last lock, began to 
discharge its water-houses on the Oise; so that we had no lack of 
company to fear. Here were all our old friends ; the Deo Gr alias 
of Conde and the Four Sons of Aymon journeyed cheerily down- 
stream along with us; we exchanged waterside pleasantries with 
the steersman perched among the lumber, or the driver hoarse 
with bawling to his horses; and the children came and looked 
over the side as we paddled by. We had never known all this 
while how much we missed them; but it gave us a fillip to see the 
smoke from their chimneys. 

A little below this junction, we made another meeting of yet 
more account. For there we were joined by the Aisne, already 
a far-traveled river and fresh out of Champagne. Here ended 
the adolescence of the Oise; this was his marriage day; thence- 
forward he had a stately, brimming march, conscious of his own 
dignity and sundry dams. He became a tranquil feature in the 
scene. The trees and towns saw themselves in him, as in a 
mirror. He carried the canoes lightly on his broad breast; there 
was no need to work hard against an eddy: but idleness became 
the order of the day, and mere straightforward dipping of the 
paddle, now on this side, now on that, without intelligence or 
effort. Truly we were coming into halcyon " weather upon all 
accounts, and were floated towards the sea like gentlemen. 

We made Compiegne as the sun was going down: a fine profile 
of a town above the river. Over the bridge a regiment was 
parading to the drum. People loitered on the quay, some fish- 
ing, some looking idly at the stream. And as the two boats shot 
in along the water, we could see them pointing them out and 
speaking one to another. We landed at a floating lavatory, 
where the washerwomen were still beating the clothes. 



AT COMPIEGNE 93 

AT COMPIEGNE 

WE put up at a big, bustling hotel in Compiegne, where 
nobody observed our presence. 

Reservery and general militarismus (as the Germans call it) 
was rampant. A camp of conical white tents without the town 
looked like a leaf out of a picture Bible; sword belts decorated 
the walls of the cafes; and the streets kept sounding all day long 
with military music. It was not possible to be an Englishman 
and avoid a feeling of elation; for the men who followed the 
drums were small, and walked shabbily. Each man inclined at 
his own angle, and jolted to his own convenience, as he went. 
There was nothing of the superb gait with which a regiment of 
tall Highlanders moves behind its music, solemn and inevitable, 
like a natural phenomenon. Who, that has seen it, can forget 
the drum major pacing in front, the drummers' tiger skins, the 
pipers' swinging plaids, the strange elastic rhythm of the whole 
regiment footing it in time — and the bang of the drum, when 
the brasses cease and the shrill pipes take up the martial story 
in their place? 

A girl at school in France began to describe one of our regi- 
ments on parade, to her French schoolmates; and as she went 
on, she told me, the recollection grew so vivid, she became so 
proud to be the countrywoman of such soldiers, and so sorry to 
be in another country, that her voice failed her and she burst 
into tears. I have never forgotten that girl; and I think she very 
nearly deserves a statue. To call her a young lady, with all its 
niminy ^ associations, would be to offer her an insult. She may 
rest assured of one thing; although she never should marry a 
heroic general, never see any great or immediate result of her 
life, she will not have lived in vain for her native land. 

But though French soldiers show to ill advantage on parade, 
* Affectedly refined. 



94 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

on the march they are gay, alert, and willing like a troop of fox 
hunters. I remember once seeing a company pass through the 
forest of Fontainebleau, on the Chailly road, between the Bas 
Breau and the Reine Blanche. One fellow walked a little before 
the rest, and sang a loud, audacious marching song. The rest 
bestirred their feet, and even swung their muskets in time. A 
young officer on horseback had hard ado to keep his countenance 
at the words. You never saw anything so cheerful and spon- 
taneous as their gait; schoolboys do not look more eagerly at 
hare and hounds; and you would have thought it impossible to 
tire such willing marchers. 

My great delight in Compiegne was the town hall. I doted 
upon the town hall. It is a monument of Gothic insecurity," 
all turreted, and gargoyled," and slashed, and bedizened with 
half a score of architectural fancies. Some of the niches are gilt 
and painted; and in a great square panel in the center, in black 
relief on a gilt ground, Louis XII " rides upon a pacing horse, 
with hand on hip and head thrown back. There is royal arro- 
gance in every line of him; the stirrupped foot projects insolently 
from the frame; the eye is hard and proud; the very horse seems 
to be treading with gratification over prostrate serfs, and to have 
the breath of the trumpet in his nostrils. So rides for ever, on 
the front of the town hall, the good king Louis XII, the father of 
his people. 

Over the king's head, in the tall center turret, appears the 
dial of a clock; and high above that three little mechanical 
figures, each one with a hammer in his hand, whose business it is 
to chime out the hours and halves and quarters for the burgesses 
of Compiegne. The center figure has a gilt breastplate; the two 
others wear gilt trunk hose; and they all three have elegant, 
flapping hats like cavaliers. As the quarter approaches, they 
turn their heads and look knowingly one to the other; and then, 
kling go the three hammers on three little bells below. The hour 
follows, deep and sonorous, from the interior of the tower; 



AT COMPIEGNE 95 

and the gilded gentlemen rest from their labors with content- 
ment. 

I had a great deal of healthy pleasure from their maneuvers, 
and took good care to miss as few performances as possible; and 
I found that even the Cigarette, while he pretended to despise 
my enthusiasm, was more or less a devotee himself. There is 
something highly absurd in the exposition of such toys to the 
outrages of winter on a housetop. They would be more in 
keeping in a glass case before a Niirnberg clock. Above all, at 
night, when the children are abed, and even grown people are 
snoring under quilts, does it not seem impertinent to leave these 
gingerbread figures winking and tinkling to the stars and the 
rolling moon? The gargoyles may fitly enough twist their ape- 
like heads; fitly enough may the potentate bestride his charger, 
like a centurion in an old German print of the Via Dolorosa; " 
but the toys should be put away in a box among some cotton, 
until the sun rises, and the children are abroad again to be 
amused. 

In Compiegne post office, a great packet of letters awaited us; 
and the authorities were, for this occasion only, so polite as to 
hand them over upon application. 

In some way, our journey may be said to end with this letter 
bag at Compiegne. The spell was broken. We had partly come 
home from that moment. 

No one should have any correspondence on a journey; it is 
bad enough to have to write; but the receipt of letters is the 
death of all holiday feeling. 

*'Out of my country and myself I go." I wish to take a dive 
among new conditions for a while, as into another element. I 
have nothing to do with my friends or my affections for the time; 
when I came away, I left my heart at home in a desk, or sent it 
forward with my portmanteau to await me at my destination. 
After my journey is over, I shall not fail to read your admirable 
letters with the attention they deserve. But I have paid all this 



96 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

money, look you, and paddled all these strokes, for no other 
purpose than to be abroad; and yet you keep me at home with 
your perpetual communications. You tug the string, and I feel 
that I am a tethered bird. You pursue me all over Europe with 
the little vexations that I came away to avoid. There is no 
discharge in the war of life, I am well aware; but shall there not 
be so much as a week's furlough? 

We were up by six the day we were to leave. They had taken 
so little note of us that I hardly thought they would have con- 
descended on a bill. But they did, with some smart particulars 
too; and we paid in a civilized manner to an uninterested clerk, 
and went out of that hotel, with the India-rubber bags, unre- 
marked. No one cared to know about us. It is not possible to 
rise before a village; but Compiegne was so grown a town, that 
it took its ease in the morning; and we were up and away while 
it was still in dressing gown and slippers. The streets were left 
to people washing doorsteps; nobody was in full dress but the 
cavaliers upon the town hall; they were all washed with dew, 
spruce in their gilding, and full of intelligence and a sense of 
professional responsibility. Kling, went they on the bells for 
the half past six, as we went by. I took it kind of them to make 
me this parting compliment; they never were in better form, not 
even at noon upon a Sunday. 

There was no one to see us off but the early washerwomen — 
early and late — who were already beating the linen in their 
floating lavatory on the river. They were very merry and 
matutinal in their ways; plunged their arms boldly in, and 
seemed not to feel the shock. It would be dispiriting to me, 
this early beginning and first cold dabble, of a most dispiriting 
day's work. But I believe they would have been as unwilling 
to change days with us, as we could be to change with them. 
They crowded to the door to watch us paddle away into the 
thin sunny mists upon the river; and shouted heartily after us 
till we were through the bridge. 



CHANGED TIMES 97 

CHANGED TIMES 

THERE is a sense in which those mists never rose from off 
our journey; and from that time forth they He very densely 
in my notebook. As long as the Oise was a small rural river, it 
took us near by people's doors, and we could hold a conversation 
with natives in the riparian fields. But now that it had grown 
so wide, the Hfe alongshore passed us by at a distance. It was 
the same, difference as between a great public highway and a 
country bypath that wanders in and out of cottage gardens. 
We now lay in towns, where nobody troubled us with questions ; 
we had floated into civilized life, where people pass without 
salutation. In sparsely inhabited places we make all we can of 
each encounter; but when it comes to a city, we keep to our- 
selves, and never speak unless we have trodden on a man's toes. 
In these waters we were no longer strange birds, -and nobody 
supposed we had traveled farther than from the last town. I 
remember, when we came into L'Isle Adam, for instance, how 
we met dozens of pleasure boats outing it for the afternoon, and 
there was nothing to distinguish the true voyager from the 
amateur, except, perhaps, the filthy condition of my sail. The 
company in one boat actually thought they recognized me for a 
neighbor. Was there ever anything more wounding? All the 
romance had come down to that. Now, on the upper Oise, where 
nothing sailed as a general thing but fish, a pair of canoeists 
could not be thus vulgarly explained away; we were strange and 
picturesque intruders; and out of people's wonder sprang a sort 
of light and passing intimacy all along our route. There is 
nothing but tit for tat in this world, though sometimes it be a 
little difficult to trace ; for the scores are older than we ourselves, 
and there has never yet been a settling day since things were. 
You get entertainment pretty much in proportion as you give. 
As long as we were a sort of odd wanderers, to be stared at and 



98 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

followed like a quack doctor or a caravan, we had no want of 
amusement in return; but as soon as we sank into commonplace 
ourselves, all whom we met were similarly disenchanted. And 
here is one reason of a dozen why the world is dull to dull persons. 

In our earlier adventures there was generally something to do, 
and that quickened us. Even the showers of rain had a revivify- 
ing effect, and shook up the brain from torpor. But now, when 
the river no longer ran in a proper sense, only glided seaward 
with an even, outright, but imperceptible speed, and when the 
sky smiled upon us day after day without variety, we began to 
slip into that golden doze of the mind which follows upon much 
exercise in the open air. I have stupefied myself in this way more 
than once; indeed, I dearly love the feeling; but I never had it to 
the same degree as when paddling down the Oise. It was the 
apotheosis ^ of stupidity. 

We ceased reading entirely. Sometimes when I found a new 
paper, I took a particular pleasure in reading a single number 
of the current novel; but I never could bear more than three 
installments; and even the second was a disappointment. As 
soon as the tale became in any way perspicuous, it lost all merit 
in my eyes; only a single scene, or, as is the way with these 
feuilletons," half a scene, without antecedent or consequence, 
like a piece of a dream, had the knack of fixing my interest. The 
less I saw of the novel, the better I liked it: a pregnant reflection. 
But for the most part, as I said, we neither of us read anything 
in the world, and employed the very little while we were awake 
between bed and dinner in poring upon maps. I have always 
been fond of maps, and can voyage in an atlas with the greatest 
enjoyment. The names of places are singularly inviting; the 
contour of coasts and rivers is enthralling to the eye; and to hit, 
in a map, upon some place you have heard of before, makes his- 
tory a new possession. But we thumbed our charts, on these 
evenings, with the blankest unconcern. We cared not a fraction 
^ Immeasurable exaltation. 



CHANGED TIMES 99 

for this place or that. We stared at the sheet as children listen 
to their rattle; and read the names of towns or villages to forget 
them again at once. We had no romance in the matter; there 
was nobody so fancy-free. If you had taken the maps away 
while we were studying them most intently, it is a fair bet 
whether we might not have continued to study the table with 
the same delight. 

About one thing we were mightily taken up, and that was 
eating. I think I made a god of my belly. I remember dwelling 
in imagination upon this or that dish till my mouth watered; 
and long before we got in for the night, my appetite was a cla- 
mant, instant annoyance. Sometimes we paddled alongside for 
a while and whetted each other with gastronomical fancies as we 
went. Cake and sherry, a homely refection, but not within 
reach upon the Oise, trotted through my head for many a mile; 
and once, as we were approaching Verberie, the Cigarette brought 
my heart into my mouth by the suggestion of oyster patties and 
Sauterne. 

I suppose none of us recognize the great part that is played in 
life by eating and drinking. The appetite is so imperious, that 
we can stomach the least interesting viands, and pass off a 
dinner hour thankfully enough on bread and water; just as there 
are men who must read something, if it were only Bradshaw^s 
Guide} But there is a romance about the matter after all. 
Probably the table has more devotees than love; and I am sure 
that food is much more generally entertaining than scenery. 
Do you give in, as Walt Whitman " would say, that you are any 
the less immortal for that? The true materialism is to be 
ashamed of what we are. To detect the flavor of an olive is no 
less a piece of human perfection than to find beauty in the colors 
of the sunset. 

Canoeing was easy work. To dip the paddle at the proper 
inclination, now right, now left; to keep the head downstream; 
* The standard British volume of railway time-tables. 



loo AN INLAND VOYAGE 

to empty the little pool that gathered in the lap of the apron; to 
screw up the eyes against the glittering sparkles of sun upon the 
water; or now and again to pass below the whistling towrope 
of the Deo Gr alias of Conde, or the Four Sons of Aymon — there 
was not much art in that; certain silly muscles managed it be- 
tween sleep and waking; and meanwhile the brain had a whole 
holiday, and went to sleep. We took in, at a glance, the larger 
features of the scene; and beheld, with half an eye, bloused fish- 
ers and dabbling washerwomen on the bank. Now and again we 
might be half wakened by some church spire, by a leaping fish, 
or by a trail of river grass that clung about the paddle and had 
to be plucked off and thrown away. But these luminous inter- 
vals were only partially luminous. A httle more of us was called 
into action, but never the whole. The central bureau of nerves, 
what in some moods we call Ourselves, enjoyed its holiday with- 
out disturbance, like a Government Office. The great wheels of 
intelligence turned idly in the head, like flywheels, grinding no 
grist. I have gone on for half an hour at a time, counting my 
strokes and forgetting the hundreds. I flatter myself the beasts 
that perish " could not underbid that, as a low form of conscious- 
ness. And what a pleasure it was! What a hearty, tolerant 
temper did it bring about! There is nothing captious about a 
man who has attained to this, the one possible apotheosis in life, 
the Apotheosis of Stupidity; and he begins to feel dignified and 
longevous like a tree. 

There was one odd piece of practical metaphysics which ac- 
companied what I may call the depth, if I must not call it the 
intensity, of my abstraction. What philosophers call me and 
not me, ego and non ego, preoccupied me whether I would or no. 
There was less me and more not me than I was accustomed to 
expect. I looked on upon somebody else, who managed the 
paddling; I was aware of somebody else's feet against the 
stretcher; my own body seemed to have no more intimate rela- 
tion to me than the canoe, or the river, or the river banks. Nor 



CHANGED TIMES loi 

this alone: something inside my mind, a part of my brain, a 
province of my proper being, had thrown off allegiance and set 
up for itself, or perhaps for the somebody else who did the 
paddling. I had dwindled into quite a little thing in a corner of 
myself. I was isolated in my own skull. Thoughts presented 
themselves unbidden; they were not my thoughts, they were 
plainly someone else's; and I considered them like a part of the 
landscape. I take it, in short, that I was about as near Nir- 
vana " as would be convenient in practical life; and if this be so, 
I make the Buddhists " my sincere compliments; 'tis an agree- 
able state, not very consistent with mental brilliancy, not ex- 
actly profitable in a money point of view, but very calm, golden, 
and incurious, and one that sets a man superior to alarms. It 
may be best figured by supposing yourself to get dead drunk, and 
yet keep sober to enjoy it. I have a notion that open air laborers 
must spend a large portion of their days in this ecstatic stupor, 
which explains their high composure and endurance. A pity to 
go to the expense of laudanum, when here is a better paradise 
for nothing! 

This frame of mind was the great exploit of our voyage, take 
it all in all. It was the farthest piece of travel accomplished. 
Indeed, it Hes so far from beaten paths of language, that I 
despair of getting the reader into sympathy with the smiling, 
complacent idiocy of my condition; when ideas came and went 
like motes in a sunbeam; when trees and church spires along the 
bank surged up from time to time into my notice, like solid 
objects through a rolling cloudland; when the rhythmical swish 
of boat and paddle in the water became a cradle song to lull my 
thoughts asleep; when a piece of mud on the deck was some- 
times an intolerable eyesore, and sometimes quite a companion 
for me, and the object of pleased consideration; — and all the 
time, with the river running and the shores changing upon either 
hand, I kept counting my strokes and forgetting the hundreds, 
the happiest animal in France. 



102 AN INLAND VOYAGE 



DOWN THE OISE: CHURCH INTERIORS 

WE made our first stage below Compiegne to Pont Sainte 
Maxence. I was abroad a little after six the next morn- 
ing. The air was biting and smelt of frost. In an open place, a 
score of women wrangled together over the day's market; and the 
noise of their negotiation sounded thin and querulous like that 
of sparrows on a winter's morning. The rare passengers blew 
into their hands, and shuffled in their wooden shoes to set the 
blood agog. The streets were full of icy shadow, although the 
chimneys were smoking overhead in golden sunshine. If you 
wake early enough at this season of the year, you may get up in 
December to break your fast in June. 

I found my way to the church; for there is always something 
to see about a church, whether living worshipers or dead men's 
tombs; you find there the deadliest earnest, and the hollo west 
deceit; and even where it is not a piece of history, it will be cer- 
tain to leak out some contemporary gossip. It was scarcely so 
cold in the church as it was without, but it looked colder. The 
white nave was positively arctic to the eye; and the tawdriness 
of a continental altar looked more forlorn than usual in the 
solitude and the bleak air. Two priests sat in the chancel, read- 
ing and waiting penitents; and out in the nave, one very old 
woman was engaged in her devotions. It was a wonder how she 
was able to pass her beads when healthy young people were 
breathing in their palms and slapping their chest; but though 
this concerned me, I was yet more dispirited by the nature of 
her exercises. She went from chair to chair, from altar to altar, 
circumnavigating the church. To each shrine, she dedicated an 
equal number of beads and an equal length of time. Like a 
prudent capitalist with a somewhat cynical view of the com- 
mercial prospect, she desired to place her supplications in a 
great variety of heavenly securities. She would risk nothing on 



DOWN THE OISE 103 

the credit of any single intercessor. Out of the whole company 
of saints and angels, not one but was to suppose himself her 
champion elect against the Great Assizes! ^ I could only think 
of it as a dull, transparent jugglery, based upon unconscious 
unbehef. 

She was as dead an old woman as ever I saw; no more than 
bone and parchment, curiously put together. Her eyes, with 
which she interrogated mine, were vacant of sense. It depends 
on what you call seeing, whether you might not call her blind. 
Perhaps she had known love: perhaps borne children, suckled 
them, and given them pet names. But now that was all gone by, 
and had left her neither happier nor wiser; and the best she could 
do with her mornings was to come up here into the cold church 
and juggle for a slice of heaven. It was not without a gulp that 
I escaped into the streets and the keen morning air. Morning? 
why, how tired of it she would be before night! and if she did not 
sleep, how then? It is fortunate that not many of us are brought 
up publicly to justify our lives at the bar of threescore years and 
ten; fortunate that such a number are knocked opportunely on 
the head in what they call the flower of their years, and go away 
to suffer for their foUies in private somewhere else. Otherwise, 
between sick children and discontented old folk, we might be put 
out of all conceit of life. 

I had need of all my cerebral hygiene during that day's 
paddle: the old devotee stuck in my throat sorely. But I was 
soon in the seventh heaven of stupidity; and knew nothing but 
that somebody was paddling a canoe, while I was counting his 
strokes and forgetting the hundreds. I used sometimes to be 
afraid I should remember the hundreds; which would have made 
a toil of a pleasure; but the terror was chimerical, they went out 
of my mind by enchantment, and I knew no more than the man 
in the moon about my only occupation. 

At Creil, where we stopped to lunch, we left the canoes in 
1 The sittings of a court; here the court of the Last Judgment. 



I04 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

another floating lavatory, which, as it was high noon, was packed 
with washerwomen, red-handed and loud-voiced; and they and 
their broad jokes are about all I remember of the place. I could 
look up my history books, if you were very anxious, and tell you 
a date or two; for it figured rather largely in the English wars. 
But I prefer to mention a girls' boarding school, which had an 
interest for us because it was a girls' boarding school, and because 
we imagined we had rather an interest for it. At least — there 
were the girls about the garden; and here were we on the river; 
and there was more than one handkerchief waved as we went by. 
It caused quite a stir in my heart; and yet how we should have 
wearied and despised each other, these girls and I, if we had been 
introduced at a croquet party! But this is a fashion I love: to 
kiss the hand or wave a handkerchief to people I shall never see 
again, to play with possibility, and knock in a peg for fancy to 
hang upon. It gives the traveler a jog, reminds him that he is 
not a traveler everywhere, and that his journey is no more than 
a siesta by the way on the real march of life. 

The church at Creil was a nondescript place in the inside, 
splashed with gaudy lights from the windows, and picked out 
with medallions of the Dolorous Way. But there was one 
oddity, in the way of an ex wto^^ which pleased me hugely: a 
faithful model of a canal boat, swung from the vault, with a 
written aspiration that God should conduct the Saint Nicolas 
of Creil to a good haven. The thing was neatly executed, and 
would have made the delight of a party of boys on the waterside. 
But what tickled me was the gravity of the peril to be conjured. 
You might hang up the model of a seagoing ship and welcome : 
one that is to plow a furrow round the world, and visit the tropic 
or the frosty poles, runs dangers that are well worth a candle and 
a mass. But the Saint Nicolas of Creil, which was to be tugged 
for some ten years by patient draft horses, in a weedy canal, 
with the poplars chattering overhead, and the skipper whistling 
at the tiller; which was to do all its errands in green, inland 



DOWN THE OISE 105 

places, and never got out of sight of a village belfry in all its 
cruising; why, you would have thought if anything could be 
done without the intervention of Providence, it would be that! 
But perhaps the skipper was a humorist: or perhaps a prophet, 
reminding people of the seriousness of life by this preposterous 
token. 

At Creil, as at Noyon, Saint Joseph seemed a favorite saint 
on the score of punctuaHty. Day and hour can be specified; and 
grateful people do not fail to specify them on a votive tablet, 
when prayers have been punctually and neatly answered. 
Whenever time is a consideration, Saint Joseph is the proper 
intermediary. I took a sort of pleasure in observing the vogue 
he had in France, for the good man plays a very small part in 
my religion at home. Yet I could not help fearing that, where 
the saint is so much commended for exactitude, he will be ex- 
pected to be very grateful for his tablet. 

This is foolishness to us Protestants; and not of great impor- 
tance anyway. Whether people's gratitude for the good gifts 
that come to them be wisely conceived or dutifully expressed, is 
a secondary matter, after all, so long as they feel gratitude. The 
true ignorance is when a man does not know that he has re- 
ceived a good gift, or begins to imagine that he has got it for 
himself. The self-made man is the funniest windbag after all! 
There is a marked difference between decreeing light in chaos, 
and lighting the gas in a metropolitan back parlor with a box 
of patent matches; and do what we will, there is always some- 
thing made to our hand, if it were only our fingers. 

But there was something worse than foolishness placarded in 
Creil Church. The Association of the Living Rosary (of which 
I had never previously heard) is responsible for that. This 
association was founded, according to the printed advertise- 
ment, by a brief ^ of Pope Gregory Sixteenth, on the 17th of 
January, 1832: according to a colored bas-relief, it seems to have 
1 An official letter or mandate from the Pope. 



lo6 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

been founded, sometime or other, by the Virgin giving one 
rosary to Saint Dominic, and the Infant Savior giving another 
to Saint Catherine of Sienna. Pope Gregory is not so imposing, 
but he is nearer hand. I could not distinctly make out whether 
the association was entirely devotional, or had an eye to good 
works; at least it is highly organized: the names of fourteen 
matrons and misses were filled in for each week of the month as 
associates, with one other, generally a married woman, at the 
top for Zelatrice: ^ the choragus ^ of the band. Indulgences," 
plenary and partial, follow on the performance of the duties of 
the association. ''The partial indulgences are attached to the 
recitation of the rosary." On "the recitation of the required 
dizaine/' ^ a partial indulgence promptly follows. When people 
serve the kingdom of Heaven with a pass book in their hands, I 
should always be afraid lest they should carry the same commer- 
cial spirit into their dealings with their fellow men, which would 
make a sad and sordid business of this life. 

There is one more article, however, of happier import. "All 
these indulgences," it appeared, "are applicable to souls in 
purgatory." For God's sake, ye ladies of Creil, apply them all 
to the souls in purgatory without delay! Burns would take no 
hire for his last songs, preferring to serve his country out of un- 
mixed love. Suppose you were to imitate the exciseman," mes- 
dames, and even if the souls in purgatory were not greatly 
bettered, some souls in Creil upon the Oise would find themselves 
none the worse either here or hereafter. 

I cannot help wondering, as I transcribe these notes, whether 
a Protestant born and bred is in a fit state to understand these 
signs, and do them what justice they deserve; and I cannot help 
answering that he is not. They cannot look so merely ugly and 
mean to the faithful as they do to me. I see that as clearly as a 
proposition in Euclid.'' For these believers are neither weak nor 

^ A zealot, an enthusiast. 
2 The leader of the chorus. ^ A group of ten prayers. 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 107 

wicked. They can put up their tablet commending Saint 
Joseph for his dispatch, as if he were still a village carpenter; 
they can "recite the required dizaine/^ and metaphorically 
pocket the indulgence, as if they had done a job for heaven ; and 
then they can go out and look down unabashed upon this wonder- 
ful river flowing by, and up without confusion at the pin-point 
stars, which are themselves great worlds full of flowing rivers 
greater than the Oise. I see it as plainly, I say, as a proposition 
in Euclid, that my Protestant mind has missed the point, and 
that there goes with these deformities some higher and more 
religious spirit than I dream. 

I wonder if other people would make the same allowances for 
me? Like the ladies of Creil, having recited my rosary of toler- 
ation, I look for my indulgence on the spot. 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 

WE made Precy about sundown. The plain is rich with tufts 
of poplar. In a wide, luminous curve, the Oise lay under 
the hillside. A faint mist began to rise and confound the differ- 
ent distances together. There was not a sound audible but that 
of the sheep bells in some meadows by the river, and the creaking 
of a cart down the long road that descends the hill. The villas 
in their gardens, the shops along the street, all seemed to have 
been deserted the day before; and I felt inclined to walk dis- 
creetly as one feels in a silent forest. All of a sudden, we came 
round a corner, and there, in a little green round the church, was 
a bevy of girls in Parisian costumes playing croquet. Their 
laughter and the hollow sound of ball and mallet made a cheery 
stir in the neighborhood; and the look of these slim figures, all 
corseted and ribboned, produced an answerable disturbance in 
our hearts. We were within sniff of Paris, it seemed. And here 
were females of our own species playing croquet, just as if Precy 



Io8 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

had been a place in real life, instead of a stage in the fairyland of 
travel. For, to be frank, the peasant woman is scarcely to be 
counted as a woman at all, and after having passed by such a 
succession of people in petticoats digging and hoeing and making 
dinner, this company of coquettes under arms made quite a 
surprising feature in the landscape, and convinced us at once of 
being fallible males. 

The inn at Precy is the worst inn in France. Not even in 
Scotland have I found worse fare. It was kept by a brother and 
sister, neither of whom was out of their teens. The sister, so to 
speak, prepared a meal for us; and the brother, who had been 
tippling, came in and brought with him a tipsy butcher, to 
entertain us as we ate. We found pieces of loo-warm pork among 
the salad, and pieces of unknown yielding substance in the 
ragoilt} The butcher entertained us with pictures of Parisian 
hfe, with which he professed himself well acquainted; the 
brother sitting the while on the edge of the billiard table, top- 
pling precariously, and sucking the stump of a cigar. In the 
midst of these diversions, bang went a drum past the house, and 
a hoarse voice began issuing a proclamation. It was a man with 
marionettes ^ announcing a performance for that evening. 

He had set up his caravan and lighted his candles on another 
part of the girls' croquet green, under one of those open sheds 
which are so common in France to shelter markets; and he and 
his wife, by the time we strolled up there, were trying to keep 
order with the audience. 

It was the most absurd contention. The show people had set 
out a certain number of benches; and all who sat upon them were 
to pay a couple of sous for the accommodation. They were 
always quite full — a bumper house ^ — as long as nothing was 
going forward; but let the show woman appear with an eye to 

1 A stew. 

2 Puppets moved by strings and made to represent characters in a mimic 
show. ' A crowded house. 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 109 

a collection, and at the first rattle of her tambourine the au- 
dience slipped off the seats, and stood round on the outside with 
their hands in their pockets. It certainly would have tried an 
angel's temper. The showman roared from the proscenium; he 
had been all over France, and nowhere, nowhere, "not even on 
the borders of Germany," had he met with such misconduct. 
Such thieves and rogues and rascals, as he called them! And 
every now and again the wife issued on another round, and 
added her shrill quota to the tirade. I remarked here, as else- 
where, how far more copious is the female mind in the material 
of insult. The audience laughed in high good humor over the 
man's declamations; but they bridled and cried aloud under the 
woman's pungent sallies. She picked out the sore points. She 
had the honor of the village at her mercy. Voices answered her 
angrily out of the crowd, and received a smarting retort for their 
trouble. A couple of old ladies beside me, who had duly paid for 
their seats, waxed very red and indignant, and discoursed to 
each other audibly about the impudence of these mountebanks; 
but as soon as the show woman caught a whisper of this, she 
was down upon them with a swoop: if mesdames could persuade 
their neighbors to act with common honesty, the mountebanks, 
she assured them, would be poHte enough; mesdames had 
probably had their bowl of soup, and perhaps a glass of wine that 
evening; the mountebanks also had a taste for soup, and did not 
choose to have their little earnings stolen from them before their 
eyes. Once, things came as far as a brief personal encounter 
between the showman and some lads, in which the former went 
down as readily as one of his own marionettes to a peal of jeering 
laughter. 

I was a good deal astonished at this scene, because I am pretty 
well acquainted with the ways of French strollers, more or less 
artistic; and have always found them singularly pleasing. Any 
stroller must be dear to the right thinking heart; if it were only 
as a living protest against ofi&ces and the mercantile spirit, and 



no AN INLAND VOYAGE 

as something to remind us that life is not by necessity the kind 
of thing we generally make it. Even a German band if you see 
it leaving town in the early morning for a campaign in country 
places, among trees and meadows, has a romantic flavor for the 
imagination. There is nobody, under thirty, so dead but his 
heart will stir a Httle at sight of a gypsies' camp. "We are not 
cotton-spinners all";" or, at least, not all through. There is 
some life in humanity yet; and youth will now and again find 
a brave word to say in dispraise of riches, and throw up a situa- 
tion to go strolling with a knapsack. 

An EngUshman has always special facilities for intercourse 
with French gymnasts; for England is the natural home of 
gymnasts. This or that fellow, in his tights and spangles, is sure 
to know a word or two of English, to have drunk English aff-''n- 
aff,^ and perhaps performed in an English music hall. He is a 
countryman of mine by profession. He leaps, like the Belgian 
boating men, to the notion that I must be an athlete myself. 

But the gymnast is not my favorite; he has little or no tinc- 
ture of the artist in his composition; his soul is small and pedes- 
trian, for the most part, since his profession makes no call upon 
it, and does not accustom him to high ideas. But if a man is 
only so much of an actor that he can stumble through a 
farce, he is made free of a new order of thoughts. He has 
something else to think about beside the money box. He 
has a pride of his own, and, what is of far more impor- 
tance, he has an aim before him that he can never quite 
attain. He has gone upon a pilgrimage that will last him 
his life long, because there is no end to it short of perfec- 
tion. He will better upon himself a little day by day; or 
even if he has given up the attempt, he will always remember 
that once upon a time he had conceived this high ideal, that 
once upon a time he had fallen in love with a star. " 'Tis better 
to have loved and lost." " Although the moon should have 
1 Half and half, a mixture of porter and ale. 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES III 

nothing to say to Endymion," although he should settle down 
with Audrey " and feed pigs, do you not think he would move 
with a better grace, and cherish higher thoughts to the end? 
The louts he meets at church never had a fancy above Audrey's 
snood; but there is a reminiscence in Endymion's heart that, like 
a spice, keeps it fresh and haughty. 

To be even one of the outskirters of art, leaves a fine stamp 
on a man's countenance. I remember once dining with a party 
in the inn at Chateau Landon. Most of them were unmistakable 
bagmen; others well-to-do peasantry; but there was one young 
fellow in a blouse, whose face stood out from among the rest 
surprisingly. It looked more finished; more of the spirit looked 
out through it; it had a living, expressive air, and you could see 
that his eyes took things in. My companion and I wondered 
greatly who and what he could be. It was fair time in Chateau 
Landon, and when we went along to the booths, we had our 
question answered; for there was our friend busily fiddling foF 
the peasants to caper to. He was a wandering violinist. 

A troop of strollers once came to the inn where I was staying, 
in the department of Seine et Marne. There was a father and 
mother; two daughters, brazen, blowsy hussies, who sang and 
acted, without an idea of how to set about either; and a dark 
young man, like a tutor, a recalcitrant house painter, who sang 
and acted not amiss. The mother was the genius of the party, 
so far as genius can be spoken of with regard to such a pack 
of incompetent humbugs ; and her husband could not find words 
to express his admiration for her comic countryman. "You 
should see my old woman," said he, and nodded his beery coun- 
tenance. One night, they performed in the stable yard, with 
flaring lamps: a wretched exhibition, coldly looked upon by a 
village audience. Next night, as soon as the lamps were lighted, 
there came a plump of rain, and they had to sweep away their 
baggage as fast as possible, and make off to the barn where they 
harbored, cold, wet, and supperless. In the morning, a dear 



112 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

friend of mine, who has as warm a heart for strollers as I 
have myself, made a little collection, and sent it by my hands 
to comfort them for their disappointment. I gave it to the 
father; he thanked me cordially, and we drank a cup to- 
gether in the kitchen, talking of roads, and audiences, and 
hard times. 

When I was going, up got my old stroller, and off with his hat. 
''I am afraid," said he, "that Monsieur will think me altogether 
a beggar; but I have another demand to make upon him." I 
began to hate him on the spot. ''We play again to-night," he 
went on. ''Of course, I shall refuse to accept any more money 
from Monsieur and his friends, who have been already so liberal. 
But our program of to-night is something truly creditable; and 
I cling to the idea that Monsieur will honor us with his pres- 
ence." And then, with a shrug and a smile: "Monsieur under- 
stands — the vanity of an artist!" Save the mark! The 
vanity of an artist! That is the kind of thing that reconciles me 
to Ufe: a ragged, tippling, incompetent old rogue, with the 
manners of a gentleman, and the vanity of an artist, to keep up 
his self-respect! 

But the man after my own heart is M. de Vauversin. It is 
nearly two years since I saw him first, and indeed I hope I may 
see him often again. Here is his first program, as I found it on 
the breakfast table, and have kept it ever since as a relic of 
bright days : — 

'^Mesdames et Messieurs, 

''Mademoiselle Ferrario et M. de Vauversin auronl Vhonneur 
de chanter ce soir les morceaux suivants. 

"Mademoiselle Ferrario chanter a — Mignon — Oiseaiix Legers 
— France — Des Franqais dorment la — Le chateau bleu — Ou 
voulez-vous alter? 

"M. de Vauversin — Madame Fontaine et M. Rohinet — Les 
plongeurs a cheval — Le Mari mecontent — Tais-toi, gamin — 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 1 13 

Mon voisin V original — Heureux comme qa — Comme on est 
trompe." ^ 

They made a stage at one end of the salle-a-manger} And 
what a sight it was to see M. de Vauversin, with a cigarette in 
his mouth, twanging a guitar, and following Mademoiselle 
Ferrario's eyes with the obedient, kindly look of a dog! The 
entertainment wound up with a tombola, or auction of lottery 
tickets: an admirable amusement, with all the excitement of 
gambling, and no hope of gain to make you ashamed of your 
eagerness; for there, all is loss; you make haste to be out of 
pocket; it is a competition who shall lose most money for the 
benefit of M. de Vauversin and Mademoiselle Ferrario. 

M. de Vauversin is a small man, with a great head of black 
hair, a vivacious and engaging air, and a smile that would be 
delightful if he had better teeth. He was once an actor in the 
Chdtelet; " but he contracted a nervous affection from the heat 
and glare of the footlights, which unfitted him for the stage. At 
this crisis Mademoiselle Ferrario, otherwise Mademoiselle Rita 
of the Alcazar, agreed to share his wandering fortunes. "I 
could never forget the generosity of that lady," said he. He 
wears trousers so tight that it has long been a problem to all 
who knew him how he manages to get in and out of them. He 
sketches a Httle in water colors; he writes verses; he is the most 
patient of fishermen, and spent long days at the bottom of the 
inn garden fruitlessly dabbling a line in the clear river. 

^ "Ladies and Gentlemen, 

" Mademoiselle Ferrario and Monsieur de Vauversin will have the honor 
of singing this evening the following selections. 

"Mademoiselle Ferrario will sing — Mignon — Birds on the Wing — 
France — There Sleep the French — The Blue Castle — Whither Will You 
Go? 

" Monsieur de Vauversin will sing — Madame Fontaine and Monsieur 
Robinet — The Divers on Horseback — The Discontented Husband — 
Hush, My Boy — My Queer Neighbor — As Happy As Can Be — How 
We Are Deceived." ^ A dining room. 



114 ^N INLAND VOYAGE 

You should hear him recounting his experiences over a bottle 
of wine; such a pleasant vein of talk as he has, with a ready 
smile at his own mishaps, and every now and then a sudden 
gravity, like a man who should hear the surf roar while he was 
telling the perils of the deep. For it was no longer ago than last 
night, perhaps, that the receipts only amounted to a franc and 
a half, to cover three francs of railway fare and two of board and 
lodging. The Maire,^ a man worth a million of money, sat in the 
front seat, repeatedly applauding Mdlle. Ferrario, and yet gave 
no more than three sous the whole evening. Local authorities 
look with such an evil eye upon the strolling artist. Alas! I 
know it well, who have been myself taken for one, and pitilessly 
incarcerated on the strength of the misapprehension. Once, 
M. de Vauversin visited a commissary of police for permission 
to sing. The commissary, who was smoking at his ease, politely 
doffed his hat upon the singer's entrance. "Mr. Commissary," 
he began, "I am an artist." And on went the commissary's hat 
again. No courtesy for the companions of Apollo! " "They are 
as degraded as that," said M. de Vauversin, with a sweep of his 
cigarette. 

But what pleased me most was one outbreak of his, when we 
had been talking all the evening of the rubs, indignities, and 
pinchings of his wandering life. Someone said it would be better 
to have a million of money down, and Mdlle. Ferrario admitted 
that she would prefer that mightily. "£A bien, moi non; — not 
I," cried de Vauversin, striking the table with his hand. "If 
any one is a failure in the world, is it not I? I had an art, in 
which I have done things well — as well as some — better per- 
haps than others; and now it is closed against me. I must go 
about the country gathering coppers and singing nonsense. Do 
you think I regret my life? Do you think I would rather be a 
fat burgess, like a calf? Not I! I have had moments when I 
have been applauded on the boards: I think nothing of that; 
^ The mayor. 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 115 

but I have known in my own mind sometimes, when I had not a 
clap from the whole house, that I had found a true intonation, or 
an exact and speaking gesture; and then, messieurs, I have 
known what pleasure was, what it was to do a thing well, what 
it was to be an artist. And to know what art is, is to have an 
interest for ever, such as no burgess can find in his petty con- 
cerns. Tenez, messieurs, je vats vous le dire ^ — it is like a reli- 
gion." 

Such, making some allowance for the tricks of memory and 
the inaccuracies of translation, was the profession of faith of 
M. de Vauversin. I have given him his own name, lest any 
other wanderer should come across him, with his guitar and 
cigarette, and Mademoiselle Ferrario! for should not all the 
world delight to honor this unfortunate and loyal follower of the 
Muses? " May Apollo send him rimes hitherto undreamed of; 
may the river be no longer scanty of her silver fishes to his lure; 
may the cold not pinch him on long winter rides nor the village 
jack-in-office affront him with unseemly manners; and may he 
never miss Mademoiselle Ferrario from his side, to follow with 
his dutiful eyes and accompany on the guitar! 

The marionettes made a very dismal entertainment. They 
performed a piece called Pyramus and Thisbe,^'^ in five mortal 
acts, and all written in Alexandrines fully as long as , the per- 
formers. One marionette was the king; another the wdcked 
counselor; a third, credited with exceptional beauty, represented 
Thisbe; and then there were guards, and obdurate fathers, and 
w^alking gentlemen. Nothing particular took place during the 
two or three acts that I sat out; but you will be pleased to learn 
that the unities " were properly respected, and the whole piece, 
with one exception, moved in harmony with classical rules. 
That exception was the comic countryman, a lean marionette in 
wooden shoes, who spoke in prose and in a broad patois ^ much 
appreciated by the audience. He took unconstitutional liberties 

^ Now then, gentlemen, I am going to tell you. ^ An illiterate dialect. 



Ii6 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

with the person of his sovereign; kicked his fellow marionettes 
in the mouth with his wooden shoes, and whenever none of the 
versifying suitors were about, made love to Thisbe on his own 
account in comic prose. 

This fellow's evolutions, and the little prologue, in which. the 
showman made a humorous eulogium of his troop, praising their 
indifference to applause and hisses, and their single devotion to 
their art, were the only circumstances in the whole affair that 
you could fancy would so much as raise a smile. But the vil- 
lagers of Precy seemed delighted. Indeed, so long as a thing is 
an exhibition, and you pay to see it, it is nearly certain to amuse. 
If we were charged so much a head for sunsets, or if God sent 
round a drum before the hawthorns came in flower, what a work 
should we not make about their beauty! But these things, like 
good companions, stupid people early cease to observe: and the 
Abstract Bagman "" tittups ^ past in his spring gig, and is posi- 
tively not aware of the flowers along the lane, or the scenery of 
the weather overhead. 



BACK TO THE WORLD 



OF the next two days' sail little remains in my mind, and 
nothing whatever in my notebook. The river streamed on 
steadily through pleasant riverside landscapes. Washerwomen 
in blue dresses, fishers in blue blouses, diversified the green 
banks; and the relation of the two colors was like that of the 
flower and the leaf in the forget-me-not. A symphony in forget- 
me-not ; I think Theophile Gautier " might thus have character- 
ized that two days' panorama. The sky was blue and cloudless; 
and the sliding surface of the river held up, in smooth places, a 
mirror to the heaven and the shores. The washerwomen hailed 
1 Capers, prances. 



BACK TO THE WORLD 1 17 

us laughingly; and the noise of trees and water made an accom- 
paniment to our dozing thoughts, as we fleeted down the stream. 

The great volume, the indefatigable purpose of the river, held 
the mind in chain. It seemed now so sure of its end, so strong 
and easy in its gait, like a grown man full of determination. The 
surf was roaring for it on the sands of Havre. 

For my own part, slipping along this moving thoroughfare in 
my fiddle case of a canoe, I also was beginning to grow weary for 
my ocean. To the civilized man there must come, sooner or 
later, a desire for civilization. I was weary of dipping the paddle ; 
I was weary of living on the skirts of life; I wished to be in the 
thick of it once more; I wished to get to work; I wished to meet 
people who understood my own speech, and could meet with me 
on equal terms, as a man, and no longer as a curiosity. 

And so a letter at Pontoise decided us, and we drew up our 
keels for the last time out of that river of Oise that had faithfully 
piloted them, through rain and sunshine, for so long. For so 
many miles had this fleet and footless beast of burden charioted 
our fortunes, that we turned our back upon it with a sense of 
separation. We had made a long detour out of the world, but 
now we were back in the familiar places, where life itself makes 
all the running, and we are carried to meet adventure without 
a stroke of the paddle. Now we were to return, like the voyager 
in the play, and see what rearrangements fortune had perfected 
the while in our surroundings; what surprises stood ready made 
for us at home; and whither and how far the world had voyaged 
in our absence. You may paddle all day long; but it is when 
you come back at nightfall, and look in at the famiHar room, 
that you find Love or Death awaiting you beside the stove; and 
the most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek. 



DEDICATION TO 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

My dear Sidney Colvin," 

The journey which this Httle book is to describe was very agreeable 
and fortunate for me. After an uncouth beginning, I had the best of 
luck to the end. But we are all travelers in what John Bunyan " calls 
the wilderness of this world — all, too, travelers with a donkey; and 
the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. He is a for- 
tunate voyager who finds many. We travel, indeed, to find them. 
They are the end and the reward of life. They keep us worthy of 
ourselves; and when we are alone, we are only nearer to the absent. 

Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the friends 
of him who writes it. They alone take his meaning; they find private 
messages, assurances of love, and expressions of gratitude dropped for 
them in every corner. The public is but a generous patron who de- 
frays the postage. Yet, though the letter is directed to all, we have 
an old and kindly custom of addressing it on the outside to one. Of 
what shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends? And so, 
my dear Sidney Colvin, it is with pride that I sign myself affection- 
ately yours, 

R. L. S. 



iig 




Map to illustrate 
TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

A»- . BY 

Robert Louis Stevenson 

SCALE OF MILES 



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tTG^'errtjain 
CalSerte 
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o Orange 



Avignon 



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Marseillje 
GULF OF L Y ' O N S 



I20 



TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 
VELAY 

" Many are the mighty things, and nought is more mighty 
tlian man. . . . He masters by his devices the tenant of 
the fields J ^ — Sophocles. 

" Who hath loosed the hands of the wild ass ?" — Job. 

THE DONKEY, THE PACK, AND THE PACKSADDLE 

IN a little place called Le Monastier," in a pleasant highland 
valley fifteen miles from Le Puy, I spent about a month 
of fine days. Monastier is notable for the making of lace, for 
drunkenness, for freedom of language, and for unparalleled 
political dissension. There are adherents of each of the four 
French parties — Legitimists, Orleanists, Imperialists, and 
Republicans " — in this little mountain town; and they all hate, 
loathe, decry, and calumniate each other. Except for business 
purposes, or to give each other the lie in a tavern brawl, they 
have laid aside even the civility of speech. 'Tis a mere mountain 
Poland." In the midst of this Babylon " I found myself a 
rallying point; every one was anxious to be kind and helpful to 
the stranger. This was not merely from the natural hospitality 
of mountain people, nor even from the surprise with which I was 
regarded as a man living of his own free will in Le Monastier, 
when he might just as well have lived anywhere else in this big 
world; it arose a good deal from my projected excursion south- 
ward through the Cevennes." A traveler of my sort was a thing 
hitherto unheard of in that district. I was looked upon with 
contempt, like a man who should project a journey to the 
moon, but yet with a respectful interest, like one setting forth 

121 



122 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

for the inclement Pole. All were ready to help in my prepara- 
tions; a crowd of sympathizers supported me at the critical 
moment of a bargain; not a step was taken but was heralded 
by glasses round and celebrated by a dinner or a breakfast. 

It was already hard upon October before I was ready to set 
forth, and at the high altitudes over which my road lay there was 
no Indian summer to be looked for. I was determined, if not to 
camp out, at least to have the means of camping out in my 
possession; for there is nothing more harassing to an easy mind 
than the necessity of reaching shelter by dusk, and the hospi- 
tality of a village inn is not always to be reckoned sure by those 
who trudge on foot. A tent, above all for a solitary traveler, is 
troublesome to pitch and troublesome to strike again; and even 
on the march it forms a conspicuous feature in your baggage. A 
sleeping sack, on the other hand, is always ready — you have 
only to get into it; it serves a double purpose — a bed by night, 
a portmanteau by day; and it does not advertise your intention 
of camping out to every curious passer-by. This is a huge point. 
If the camp is not secret, it is but a troubled resting place; you 
become a public character; the convivial rustic visits your bed- 
side after an early supper; and you must sleep with one eye 
open, and be up before the day. I decided on a sleeping sack; 
and after repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high living for 
myself and my advisers, a sleeping sack was designed, con- 
structed, and triumphally brought home. 

This child of my invention was nearly six feet square, ex- 
clusive of two triangular flaps to serve as a pillow by night and 
as the top and bottom of the sack by day. I call it '' the sack," 
but it was never a sack by more than courtesy: only a sort of 
long roll or sausage, green waterproof cart cloth without and 
blue sheep's fur within. It was commodious as a valise, warm 
and dry for a bed. There was luxurious turning room for one; 
and at a pinch the thing might serve for two. I could bury 
myself in it up to the neck; for my head I trusted to a fur cap, 



THE DONKEY, THE PACK, AND THE PACKSADDLE 123 

with a hood to fold down over my ears, and a band to pass under 
my nose Hke a respirator; " and in case of heavy rain I proposed 
to make myself a little tent, or tentlet, with my waterproof coat, 
three stones, and a bent branch. 

It will readily be conceived that I could not carry this huge 
package on my ow^n, merely human, shoulders. It remained 
to choose a beast of burden. Now, a horse is a fine lady among 
animals, flighty, timid, dehcate in eating, of tender health; he is 
too valuable and too restive to be left alone, so that you are 
chained to your brute as to a fellow galley slave; a dangerous 
road puts him out of his wdts; in short, he's an uncertain and 
exacting ally, and adds thirtyfold to the troubles of the voyager. 
What I required was something cheap and small and hardy, and 
of a stolid and peaceful temper; and all these requisites pointed 
to a donkey. 

There dwelt an old man in Monastier, of rather unsound 
intellect according to some, much followed by street boys, and 
known to fame as Father Adam. Father Adam had a cart, and 
to draw the cart a diminutive she-ass, not much bigger than a 
dog, the color of a mouse, with a kindly eye and a determined 
underjaw. There was something neat and high-bred, a quaker- 
ish elegance, about the rogue that hit my fancy on the spot. 
Our first interview was in Monastier market place. To prove 
her good temper, one child after another was set upon her back 
to ride, and one after another went head over heels into the air; 
until a want of confidence began to reign in youthful bosoms, 
and the experiment w^as discontinued from a dearth of subjects. 
I was already backed by a deputation of my friends; but as if 
this were not enough, all the buyers and sellers came round and 
helped me in the bargain; and the ass and I and Father Adam 
were the center of a hubbub for near half an hour. At length 
she passed into my service for the consideration of sixty-five 
francs ^ and a glass of brandy. The sack had already cost eighty 
^ About thirteen dollars. 



124 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

francs and two glasses of beer; so that Modestine, as I instantly 
baptized her, was upon all accounts the cheaper article. Indeed, 
that was as it should be; for she was only an appurtenance of 
my mattress, or self-acting bedstead on four casters. 

I had a last interview with Father Adam in a billiard room at 
the witching hour of dawn, when I administered the brandy. 
He professed himself greatly touched by the separation, and 
declared he had often bought white bread for the donkey when 
he had been content with black bread for himself; but this, ac- 
cording to the best authorities, must have been a flight of fancy. 
He had a name in the village for brutally misusing the ass; yet 
it is certain that he shed a tear, and the tear made a clean mark 
down one cheek. 

By the advice of a fallacious local saddler, a leather pad was 
made for me with rings to fasten on my bundle; and I thought- 
fully completed my kit and arranged my toilet. By way of 
armory and utensils, I took a revolver, a little spirit lamp and 
pan, a lantern and some halfpenny candles, a jackknife, and a 
large leather flask. The main cargo consisted of two entire 
changes of warm clothing — besides my traveling wear of coun- 
try velveteen, pilot coat,^ and knitted spencer ^ — some books, 
and my raflway rug, which, being also in the form of a bag, 
made me a double castle for cold nights. The permanent larder 
was represented by cakes of chocolate and tins of Bologna 
sausage. All this, except what I carried about my person, was 
easily stowed into the sheepskin bag; and by good fortune I 
threw in my empty knapsack, rather for convenience of carriage 
than from any thought that I should want it on my journey. 
For more immediate needs, I took a leg of cold mutton, a bottle 
of Beaujolais,^ an empty bottle to carry milk, an egg beater, and 
a considerable quantity of black bread and white, like Father 
Adam, for myself and donkey, only in my scheme of things the 
destinations were reversed. 

^ A sailor's pea-jacket. ^ \ short over-jacket. ^ A local wine. 



THE DONKEY, THE PACK, AND THE PACKSADDLE 125 
MonastrianSj of all shades of thought in politics, had agreed 
in threatening me with many ludicrous misadventures, and with 
sudden death in many surprising forms. Cold, wolves, robbers, 
above all the nocturnal practical joker, were daily and elo- 
quently forced on my attention. Yet in these vaticinations,^ 
the true, patent danger was left out. Like Christian," it was 
from my pack I suffered by the way. Before telling my own 
mishaps, let me, in two words, relate the lesson of my experience. 
If the pack is well strapped at the ends, and hung at full length 
— not doubled, for your life — across the packsaddle, the trav- 
eler is safe. The saddle will certainly not fit, such is the imper- 
fection of our transitory life; it will assuredly topple and tend 
to overset; but there are stones on every roadside, and a man 
soon learns the art of correcting any tendency to overbalance 
with a well-adjusted stone. 

On the day of my departure I w^as up a little after five; by 
six, we began to load the donkey; and ten minutes after, my 
hopes were in the dust. The pad would not stay on Modestine's 
back for half a moment. I returned it to its maker, with whom 
I had so contumelious ^ a passage ^ that the street outside was 
crowded from wall to wall with gossips looking on and listening. 
The pad changed hands with much vivacity; perhaps it would 
be more descriptive to say that we threw it at each other's 
heads; and, at any rate, we were very warm and unfriendly, and 
spoke with a deal of freedom. 

I had a common donkey packsaddle — a harde, as they call 
it — fitted upon Modestine; and once more loaded her with my 
effects. The doubled sack, my pilot coat (for it w^as warm, and 
I was to walk in my waistcoat), a great bar of black bread, and 
an open basket containing the w^hite bread, the mutton, and the 
bottles, were all corded together in a very elaborate system of 
knots, and I looked on the result with fatuous ^ content. In 
such a monstrous deck cargo, all poised above the donkey's 
1 Prophecies. 2 Bitter. ' Quarrel. ■* Foolish, stupid. 



126 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

shoulders, with nothing below to balance, on a brand-new 
packsaddle that had not yet been worn to fit the animal, and 
fastened with brand-new girths that might be expected to stretch 
and slacken by the way, even a very careless traveler should 
have seen disaster brewing. That elaborate system of knots, 
again, was the work of too many sympathizers to be very art- 
fully designed. It is true they tightened the cords with a will; 
as many as three at a time would have a foot against Modestine's 
quarters, and be hauling with clenched teeth; but I learned 
afterwards that one thoughtful person, without any exercise of 
force, can make a more solid job than half a dozen heated and 
enthusiastic grooms. I was then but a novice; even after the 
misadventure of the pad nothing could disturb my security, and 
I went forth from the stable door as an ox goeth to the slaughter." 



THE GREEN DONKEY DRIVER 

THE bell of Monastier was just striking nine as I got quit of 
these preliminary troubles and descended the hill through 
the common. As long as I was within sight of the windows, a 
secret shame and the fear of some laughable defeat withheld me 
from tampering with Modestine. She tripped along upon her 
four small hoofs with a sober daintiness of gait; from time to 
time she shook her ears or her tail ; and she looked so small under 
the bundle that my mind misgave me. We got across the ford 
without difficulty — there was no doubt about the matter, she 
was dociHty itself — and once on the other bank, where the 
road begins to mount through pine woods, I took in my right 
hand the unhallowed staff, and with a quaking spirit applied it 
to the donkey. Modestine brisked up her pace for perhaps three 
steps, and then relapsed into her former minuet. Another appli- 
cation had the same effect, and so with the third. I am worthy 
the name of an Englishman, and it goes against my conscience 



THE GREEN DONKEY DRIVER 1 27 

to lay my hand rudely on a female. I desisted, and looked her 
all over from head to foot; the poor brute's knees were trembling 
and her breathing was distressed; it was plain that she could go 
no faster on a hill. God forbid, thought I, that I should brutalize 
this innocent creature; let her go at her own pace, and let me 
patiently follow. 

What that pace was, there is no word mean enough to de- 
scribe; it was something as much slower than a walk as a walk 
is slower than a run; it kept me hanging on each foot for an in- 
credible length of time; in five minutes it exhausted the spirit 
and set up a fever in all the muscles of the leg. And yet I had to 
keep close at hand and measure my advance exactly upon hers; 
for if I dropped a few yards into the rear, or went on a few yards 
ahead, Modestine came instantly to a halt and began to browse. 
The thought that this was to last from here to Alais nearly broke 
my heart. Of all conceivable journeys, this promised to be the 
most tedious. I tried to tell myself it was a lovely day; I tried 
to charm my foreboding spirit with tobacco; but I had a vision 
ever present to me of the long, long roads, up hill and down dale, 
and a pair of figures ever infinitesimally moving, foot by foot, 
a yard to the minute, and, like things enchanted in a nightmare, 
approaching no nearer to the goal. 

In the meantime there came up behind us a tall peasant, per- 
haps forty years of age, of an ironical snuffy countenance, and 
arrayed in the green tail coat of the country. He overtook us 
hand over hand, and stopped to consider our pitiful advance. 

"Your donkey," says he, ''is very old?" 

I told him I believed not. 

Then, he supposed, we had come far. 

I told him we had but newly left Monastier. 

^^ Et vous marchez comme qa^^^ cried he; and, throwing back his 
head, he laughed long and heartily. I watched him, half pre- 
pared to feel offended, until he had satisfied his mirth; and then, 
^ "And you're traveling like that!" 



128 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

''You must have no pity on these animals," said he; and, pluck- 
ing a switch out of a thicket, he began to lace Modestine about 
the sternworks, uttering a cry. The rogue pricked up her ears 
and broke into a good round pace, which she kep^ up without 
flagging, and without exhibiting the least symptom of distress, as 
long as the peasant kept beside us. Her former panting and 
shaking had been, I regret to say, a piece of comedy. 

My deus ex machind,"' before he left me, supplied some ex- 
cellent, if inhumane, advice; presented me with the switch, 
which he declared she would feel more tenderly than my cane; 
and finally taught me the true cry or masonic word of donkey 
drivers, "Proot!" All the time he regarded me with a comical 
incredulous air, which was embarrassing to confront; and smiled 
over my donkey driving, as I might have smiled over his or- 
thography, or his green tail coat. But it was not my turn for 
the moment. 

I was proud of my new lore, and thought I had learned the 
art to perfection. And certainly Modestine did wonders for the 
rest of the forenoon, and I had a breathing space to look about 
me. It was Sabbath; the mountain fields were all vacant in the 
sunshine; and as we came down through St. Martin de Frugeres, 
the church was crowded to the door, there were people kneeling 
without upon the steps, and the sound of the priest's chanting 
came forth out of the dim interior. It gave me a home feehng 
on the spot; for I am a countryman of the Sabbath," so to speak, 
and all Sabbath observances, like a Scotch accent, strike in me 
mixed feelings, grateful and the reverse. It is only a traveler, 
hurrying by like a person from another planet, who can rightly 
enjoy the peace and beauty of the great ascetic feast. The 
sight of the resting country does his spirit good. There is some- 
thing better than music in the wide unusual silence; and it 
disposes him to amiable thoughts, like the sound of a little river 
or the warmth of sunlight. 

In this pleasant humor I came down the hill to where Goudet 



THE GREEN DONKEY DRIVER 129 

stands in a green end of a valley, with Chateau Beaufort opposite 
upon a rocky steep, and the stream, as clear as crystal, lying in a 
deep pool between them. Above and below, you may hear it 
wimpling over the stones, an amiable stripling of a river, which 
it seems absurd to call the Loire. On all sides, Goudet is shut in 
by mountains; rocky footpaths, practicable at best for donkeys, 
join it to the outer world of France; and the men and women 
drink and swear, in their green corner, or look up at the snow 
clad peaks in winter from the threshold of their homes, in an 
isolation, you would think, like that of Homer's Cyclops." But 
it is not so; the postman reaches Goudet with the letter bag; 
the aspiring youth of Goudet are within a day's walk of the rail- 
way at Le Puy; and here in the inn you may find an engraved 
portrait of the host's nephew, Regis Senac, "Professor of Fenc- 
ing and Champion of the two Americas," a distinction gained 
by him, along with the sum of five hundred dollars, at Tammany 
Hall, New York, on the loth April 1876. 

I hurried over my midday meal, and was early forth again. 
But, alas, as we climbed the interminable hill upon the other 
side, "Proot!" seemed to have lost its virtue. I prooted like a 
Hon, I prooted mellifluously like a sucking dove; " but Modestine 
would be neither softened nor intimidated. She held doggedly 
to her pace; nothing but a blow would move her, and that only 
for a second. I must follow at her heels, incessantly belaboring. 
A moment's pause in this ignoble toil, and she relapsed into her 
own private gait. I think I never heard of any one in as mean 
a situation. I must reach the lake of Bouchet, where I meant to 
camp, before sundown, and, to have even a hope of this, I must 
instantly ^ maltreat this uncomplaining animal. The sound of 
my own blows sickened me. Once, when I looked at her, she had 
a faint resemblance to a lady of my acquaintance who formerly 
loaded me with kindness; and this increased my horror of my 
cruelty. 

^ Constantly, 



130 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

To make matters worse, we encountered another donkey, 
ranging at will upon the roadside; and this donkey chanced to 
be a gentleman. He and Modestine met nickering for joy, and 
I had to separate the pair and beat down their young romance 
with a renewed and feverish bastinado. If the other donkey had 
had the heart of a male under his hide, he would have fallen upon 
me tooth and hoof; and this was a kind of consolation — he was 
plainly unworthy of Modestine's affection. But the incident 
saddened me, as did everything that spoke of my donkey's sex. 

It was blazing hot up the valley, windless, with vehement sun 
upon my shoulders; and I had to labor so consistently with my 
stick that the sweat ran into my eyes. Every five minutes, too, 
the pack, the basket, and the pilot coat would take an ugly slew 
to one side or the other; and I had to stop Modestine, just when 
I had got her to a tolerable pace of about two miles an hour, to 
tug, push, shoulder, and readjust the load. And at last, in the 
village of Ussel, saddle and all, the whole hypothec " turned 
round and groveled in the dust below the donkey's belly. She, 
none better pleased, incontinently drew up and seemed to smile; 
and a party of one man, two women, -and two children came up, 
and, standing round me in a half circle, encouraged her by their 
example. 

I had the devil's own trouble to get the thing righted; and the 
instant I had done so, without hesitation, it toppled and fell 
down upon the other side. Judge if I was hot! And yet not a 
hand was offered to assist me. The man, indeed, told me I 
ought to have a package of a different shape. I suggested, if he 
knew nothing better to the point in my predicament, he might 
hold his tongue. And the good-natured dog agreed with me 
smihngly. It was the most despicable fix. I must plainly con- 
tent myself with the pack for Modestine, and take the following 
items for my own share of the portage: a cane, a quart flask, a 
pilot jacket heavily weighted in the pockets, two pounds of 
black bread, and an open basket full of meats and bottles. I 



THE GREEN DONKEY DRIVER 131 

believe I may say I am not devoid of greatness of soul ; for I did 
not recoil from this infamous burden. I disposed it, Heaven 
knows how, so as to be mildly portable, and then proceeded to 
steer Modestine through the village. She tried, as was indeed 
her invariable habit, to enter every house and every courtyard 
in the whole length; and, encumbered as I was, without a hand 
to help myself, no words can render an idea of my difficulties. 
A priest, with six or seven others, was examining a church in 
process of repair, and he and his acolytes ^ laughed loudly as 
they saw my plight. I remembered having laughed myself when 
I had seen good men struggling with adversity in the person of a 
jackass, and the recollection filled me with penitence. That was 
in my old light days, before this trouble came upon me. God 
knows at least that I shall never laugh again, thought I. But 
O, what a cruel thing is a farce to those engaged in it! 

A little out of the village, Modestine, filled with the demon, 
set her heart upon a byroad, and positively refused to leave it. 
I dropped all my bundles, and, I am ashamed to say, struck the 
poor sinner twice across the face. It was pitiful to see her Hft 
up her head with shut eyes, as if waiting for another blow. I 
came very near crying; but I did a wiser thing than that, and sat 
squarely down by the roadside to consider my situation under 
the cheerful influence of tobacco and a nip of brandy. Modes- 
tine, in the meanwhile, munched some black bread with a con- 
trite hypocritical air. It was plain that I must make a sacrifice 
to the gods of shipwreck. I threw away the empty bottle 
destined to carry milk; I threw away my own white bread, and, 
disdaining to act by general average, kept the black bread for 
Modestine; lastly, I threw away the cold leg of mutton and the 
egg whisk, although this last was dear to my heart. Thus I 
found room for everything in the basket, and even stowed the 
boating coat on the top. By means of an end of cord I slung it 
under one arm; and although the cord cut my shoulder, and the 
^ Assistant priests. 



132 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

jacket hung almost to the ground, it was with a heart greatly 
lightened that I set forth again. 

I had now an arm free to thrash Modestine, and cruelly I 
chastised her. If I were to reach the lakeside before dark, she 
must bestir her little shanks to some tune. Already the sun had 
gone down into a windy-looking mist; and although there were 
still a few streaks of gold far off to the east on the hills and 
the black fir woods, all was cold and gray about our onward 
path. An infinity of Uttle country byroads led hither and thither 
among the fields. It was the most pointless labyrinth. I could 
see my destination overhead, or rather the peak that dominates 
it; but choose as I pleased, the roads always ended by turning 
away from it, and sneaking back towards the valley, or north- 
ward along the margin of the hills. The failing light, the waning 
color, the naked, unhomely, stony country through which I was 
traveling, threw me into some despondency. I promise you, the 
stick was not idle; I think every decent step that Modestine 
took must have cost me at least two emphatic blows. There 
was not another sound in the neighborhood but that of my un- 
wearying bastinado. 

Suddenly, in the midst of my toils, the load once more bit the 
dust, and, as by enchantment, all the cords were simultaneously 
loosened, and the road scattered with my dear possessions. The 
packing was to begin again from the beginning ; and as I had to 
invent a new and better system, I do not doubt but I lost half 
an hour. It began to be dusk in earnest as I reached a wilder- 
ness of turf and stones. It had the air of being a road which 
should lead everywhere at the same time; and I was falling into 
something not unlike despair when I saw two figures stalking 
towards me over the stones. They walked one behind the other 
like tramps, but their pace was remarkable. The son led the 
way, a tall, ill-made, somber, Scotch-looking man; the mother 
followed, all in her Sunday's best, with an elegantly embroidered 
ribbon to her cap, and a new felt hat atop, and proffering, as she 



THE GREEN DONKEY DRIVER 133 

strode along with kilted petticoats, a string of obscene and 
blasphemous oaths. 

I hailed the son and asked him my direction. He pointed 
loosely west and northwest, muttered an inaudible comment, 
and, without slacking his pace for an instant, stalked on, as he 
was going, right athwart my path. The mother followed with- 
out so much as raising her head. I shouted and shouted after 
them, but they continued to scale the hillside, and turned a deaf 
ear to my outcries. At last, leaving Modestine by herself, I was 
constrained to run after them, hailing the while. They stopped 
as I drew near, the mother still cursing; and I could see she was 
a handsome, motherly, respectable-looking woman. The son 
once more answered me roughly and inaudibly, and was for 
setting out again. But this time I simply collared the mother, 
who was nearest me, and, apologizing for my violence, declared 
that I could not let them go until they had put me on my road. 
They were neither of them offended — rather mollified than 
otherwise; told me I had only to follow them; and then the 
mother asked me what I wanted by the lake at such an hour. I 
replied, in the Scotch manner, by inquiring if she had far to go 
herself. She told me, with another oath, that she had an hour 
and a half's road before her. And then, without salutation, the 
pair strode forward again up the hillside in the gathering dusk. 

I returned for Modestine, pushed her briskly forward, and, 
after a sharp ascent of twenty minutes, reached the edge of a 
plateau. The view, looking back on my day's journey, was both 
wild and sad. Mount Mezenc and the peaks beyond St. Juhen 
stood out in trenchant gloom against a cold glitter in the east; 
and the intervening field of hills had fallen together into one 
broad wash of shadow, except here and there the outline of a 
wooded sugar loaf in black, here and there a white irregular 
patch to represent a cultivated farm, and here and there a blot 
where the Loire, the Gazeille, or the Laussonne wandered in a 
gorge. 



134 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

Soon we were on a highroad, and surprise seized on my mind 
as I beheld a village of some magnitude close at hand; for I had 
been told that the neighborhood of the lake was uninhabited 
except by trout. The road smoked in the twilight with children 
driving home cattle from the fields; and a pair of mounted stride- 
legged women, hat and cap and all, dashed past me at a hammer- 
ing trot from the canton ^ where they had been to church and 
market, I asked one of the children where I was. At Bouchet 
St. Nicolas, he told me. Thither, about a mile south of my 
destination, and on the other side of a respectable summit, had 
these confused roads and treacherous peasantry conducted me. 
My shoulder was cut, so that it hurt sharply; my arm ached like 
toothache from perpetual beating; I gave up the lake and my 
design to camp, and asked for the auberge. 



I HAVE A GOAD 



THE auberge of Bouchet St. Nicolas was among the least 
pretentious I have ever visited; but I saw many more of 
the Hke upon my journey. Indeed, it was typical of these French 
highlands. Imagine a cottage of two stories, with a bench before 
the door; the stable and kitchen in a suite, so that Modestine 
and I could hear each other dining; furniture of the plainest, 
earthen floors, a single bedchamber for travelers, and that 
without any convenience but beds. In the kitchen cooking and 
eating go forward side by side, and the family sleep at night. 
Any one who has a fancy to wash must do so in public at the 
common table. The food is sometimes spare; hard fish and 
omelette have been my portion more than once; the wine is of 
the smallest, the brandy abominable to man ; and the visit of a 
fat sow, grouting under the table and rubbing against your legs, 
is no impossible accompaniment to dinner. 
^ A small country district. 



/ HAVE A GOAD 135 

But the people of the inn, in nine cases out of ten, show them- 
selves friendly and considerate. As soon as you cross the doors 
you cease to be a stranger; and although these peasantry are 
rude and forbidding on the highway, they show a tincture of 
kind breeding when you share their hearth. At Bouchet, for 
instance, I uncorked my bottle of Beaujolais, and asked the 
host to join me. He would take but little. 

"I am an amateur ^ of such wine, do you see?" he said, "and 
I am capable of leaving you not enough." 

In these hedge inns the traveler is expected to eat with his 
own knife; unless he ask, no other will be supplied; with a glass, 
a whang ^ of bread, and an iron fork, the table is completely laid. 
My knife was cordially admired by the landlord of Bouchet, and 
the spring filled him w^ith wonder. 

"I should never have guessed that," he said. "I would bet," 
he added, weighing it in his hand, "that this cost you not less 
than five francs." 

When I told him it had cost me twenty, his jaw dropped. 

He was a mild, handsome, sensible, friendly old man, aston- 
ishingly ignorant. His wife, who was not so pleasant in her 
manners, knew how to read, although I do not suppose she ever 
did so. She had a share of brains and spoke with a cutting 
emphasis, like one who ruled the roast." 

"My man knows nothing," she said, with an angry nod; "he 
is like the beasts." 

And the old gentleman signified acquiescence with his head. 
There was no contempt on her part, and no shame on his; the 
facts were accepted loyally, and no more about the matter. 

I was tightly cross-examined about my journey; and the lady 
understood in a moment, and sketched out what I should put 
into my book when I got home. " Whether people harvest or not 
in such a place; if there were forests; studies of manners; what, 
for example, I and the master of the house say to you; the 
^ Lover. 2 A big slice. 



136 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

beauties of Nature, and all that." And she interrogated me 
with a look. 

"Itis just that," said I. 

"You see," she added to her husband, "I understood that." 

They were both much interested by the story of my misad- 
ventures. 

"In the morning," said the husband, "I will make you some- 
thing better than your cane. Such a beast as that feels nothing; 
it is in the proverb — dur comme un dne;^ you might beat. her 
insensible with a cudgel, and yet you would arrive nowhere." 

Something better! I Uttle knew what he was offering. 

The sleeping room was furnished with two beds. I had one; 
and I will own I was a little abashed to find a young man and 
his wife and child in the act of mounting into the other. This 
was my first experience of the sort; and if I am always to feel 
equally silly and extraneous, I pray God it be my last as well. I 
kept my eyes to myself, and know nothing of the woman except 
that she had beautiful arms, and seemed no whit abashed by my 
appearance. As a matter of fact, the situation was more trying 
to me than to the pair. A pair keep each other in countenance; 
it is the single gentleman who has to blush. But I could not 
help attributing my sentiments to the husband, and sought to 
conciliate his tolerance with a cup of brandy from my flask. He 
told me that he was a cooper of Alais traveling to St. Etienne in 
search of work, and that in his spare moments he followed the 
fatal calHng of a maker of matches. Me he readily enough 
divined to be a brandy merchant. 

I was up first in the morning (Monday, September 23d), and 
hastened my toilet guiltily, so as to leave a clear field for madam, 
the cooper's wife. I drank a bowl of milk, and set off to explore 
the neighborhood of Bouchet. It was perishing cold, a gray, 
windy, wintry morning; misty clouds flew fast and low; the wind 
piped over the naked platform; and the only speck of color was 
^ Tough as an ass. 



I HAVE A GOAD 137 

away behind Mount Mezenc and the eastern hills, where the 
sky still wore the orange of the dawn. 

It was five in the morning, and four thousand feet above the 
sea; and I had to bury my hands in my pockets and trot. People 
were trooping out to the labors of the field by twos and threes, 
and all turned round to stare upon the stranger. I had seen 
them coming back last night, I saw them going afield again; and 
there was the life of Bouchet in a nutshell. 

When I came back to the inn for a bit of breakfast, the land- 
lady was in the kitchen combing out her daughter's hair; and I 
made her my compliments upon its beauty. 

'^O no," said the mother; "it is not so beautiful as it ought to 
be. Look, it is too fine." 

Thus does a wise peasantry console itself under adverse 
physical circumstances, and, by a startling democratic process, 
the defects of the majority decide the type of beauty. 

"And where," said I, "is monsieur?" 

"The master of the house is upstairs," she answered, "making 
you a goad." 

Blessed be the man who invented goads! Blessed the inn- 
keeper of Bouchet St. Nicolas, who introduced me to their use! 
This plam wand, with an eighth of an inch of pin, was indeed 
a scepter when he put it in my hands. Thenceforward Modestine 
was my slave. A prick, and she passed the most inviting stable 
door. A prick, and she broke forth into a gallant Httle trotlet 
that devoured the miles. , It was not a remarkable speed, when 
all was said; and we took four hours to cover ten miles at the 
best of it. But what a heavenly change since yesterday! No 
more wielding of the ugly cudgel; no more flailing with an aching 
arm; no more broadsword exercise, but a discreet and gentle- 
manly fence. And what although now and then a drop of blood 
should appear on Modestine's mouse-colored wedge-like rump? 
I should have preferred it otherwise, indeed; but yesterday's 
exploits had purged my heart of all humanity. The perverse 



138 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

little devil, since she would not be taken with kindness, must 
even go with pricking. 

It was bleak and bitter cold, and, except a cavalcade of stride- 
legged ladies and a pair of post runners, the road was dead 
solitary all the way to Pradelles. I scarce remember an incident 
but one. A handsome foal with a bell about his neck came 
charging up to us upon a stretch of common, sniffed the air 
martially as one about to do great deeds, and, suddenly thinking 
otherwise in his green young heart, put about and galloped off 
as he had come, the bell tinkling in the wind. For a long while 
afterwards I saw his noble attitude as he drew up, and heard the 
note of his bell; and when I struck the highroad, the song of the 
telegraph wires seemed to continue the same music. 

Pradelles stands on a hillside, high above the Allier, sur- 
rounded by rich meadows. They were cutting aftermath on all 
sides, which gave the neighborhood, this gusty autumn morning, 
an untimely smell of hay. On the opposite bank of the Alher 
the land kept mounting for miles to the horizon: a tanned and 
sallow autumn landscape, with black blots of fir wood and white 
roads wandering through the hills. Over all this the clouds shed 
a uniform and purplish shadow, sad and somewhat menacing, 
exaggerating height and distance, and throwing into still higher 
relief the twisted ribbons of the highway. It was a cheerless 
prospect, but one stimulating to a traveler. For I was now upon 
the limit of Velay, and all that I beheld lay in another county — 
wild Gevaudan, mountainous, uncultivated, and but recently 
disforested from terror of the wolves. 

Wolves, alas, like bandits, seem to flee the traveler's advance; 
and you may trudge through all our comfortable Europe, and 
not meet with an adventure worth the name. But here, if any- 
where, a man was on the frontiers of hope. For this was the 
land of the ever-memorable Beast, the Napoleon Buonaparte of 
wolves. What a career was his! He lived ten months at free 
quarters in Gevaudan and Vivarais; he ate women and children 



I HAVE A GOAD 139 

and "shepherdesses celebrated for their beauty"; he pursued 
armed horsemen; he has been seen at broad noonday chasing a 
post chaise and outrider along the king's highroad, and chaise 
and outrider fleeing before him at the gallop. He was placarded 
like a political offender, and ten thousand francs were offered 
for his head. And yet, when he was shot and sent to Versailles, 
behold! a common wolf, and even small for that. ''Though I 
could reach from pole to pole," sang Alexander Pope;" the little 
corporal" shook Europe; and if all wolves had been as this wolf, 
they would have changed the history of man. M. Elie Berthet 
has made him the hero of a novel, which I have read, and do not 
wish to read again. 

I hurried over my lunch, and was proof against the landlady's 
desire that I should visit our Lady of Pradelles, "who per- 
formed many miracles, although she was of wood"; and before 
three quarters of an hour I was goading Modestine down the 
steep descent that leads to Langogne on the Allier. On both 
sides of the road, in big dusty fields, farmers were preparing for 
next spring. Every fifty yards a yoke of great-necked stolid 
oxen were patiently haling at the plow. I saw one of these mild, 
formidable servants of the glebe, who took a sudden interest in 
Modestine and me. The furrow down which he was journeying 
lay at an angle to the road, and his head was solidly fixed to the 
yoke like those of caryatides ^ below a ponderous cornice; but 
he screwed round his big honest eyes and followed us with a 
ruminating look, until his master bade him turn the plow and 
proceed to reascend the field. From all these furrowing plow- 
shares, from the feet of oxen, from a laborer here and there who 
was breaking the dry clods with a hoe, the wind carried away a 
thin dust like so much smoke. It was a fine, busy, breathing, 
rustic landscape; and as I continued to descend, the highlands 
of Gevaudan kept mounting in front of me against "the sky. 

I had crossed the Loire the day before; now I was to cross the 
1 Sculptured columns in the form of female figures. 



I40 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

Allier; so near are these two confluents in their youth. Just at 
the bridge of Langogne, as the long-promised rain was beginning 
to fall, a lassie of some seven or eight addressed me in the sacra- 
mental phrase, "D'ou'st que vous venez?^^ ^ She did it with so 
high an air that she set me laughing; and this cut her to the 
quick. She was evidently one who reckoned on respect, and 
stood looking after me in silent dudgeon, as I crossed the bridge 
and entered the county of Gevaudan. 



UPPER GEVAUDAN 

" The way also here was very wearisome through dirt 
and slahhiness; nor was there on all this ground so 
much as one inn or victualling-house wherein to 
refresh the feebler sort." — Pilgrim's Progress. 

A CAMP IN THE DARK 

THE next day (Tuesday, September 24th), it was two o'clock 
in the afternoon before I got my journal written up and 
my knapsack repaired, for I was determined to carry my knap- 
sack in the future and have no more ado with baskets; and half 
an hour afterwards I set out for Le Cheylard I'Eveque, a place 
on the borders of the forest of Mercoire. A man, I was told, 
should walk there in an hour and a half; and I thought it scarce 
too ambitious to suppose that a man encumbered with a donkey 
might cover the same distance in four hours. 

All the way up the long hill from Langogne it rained and 
hailed alternately; the wind kept freshening steadily, although 
slowly; plentiful hurrying clouds — some dragging veils of 
straight rain-shower, others massed and luminous as though 
promising snow — careered out of the north and followed me 
along my way. I was soon out of the cultivated basin of the 
Allier, and away from the plowing oxen, and such like sights of 
the country. Moor, heathery marsh, tracts of rock and pines, 
1 "Where do you come from?" 



A CAMP IN THE DARK 141 

woods of birch all jeweled with the autumn yellow, here and 
there a few naked cottages and bleak fields, — these were the 
characters of the country. Hill and valley followed valley and 
hill; the httle green and stony cattle- tracks wandered in and out 
of one another, split into three or four, died away in marshy 
hollows, and began again sporadically on hillsides or at the bor- 
ders of a wood. 

There was no direct road to Cheylard, and it was no easy 
affair to make a passage in this uneven country and through this 
intermittent labyrinth of tracks. It must have been about four 
when I struck Sagnerousse, and went on my way rejoicing in a 
sure point of departure. Two hours afterwards, the dusk 
rapidly falling, in a lull of the wind, I issued from a fir wood 
where I had long been wandering, and found, not the looked-for 
village, but another marish ^ bottom among rough-and-tumble 
hills. For some time past I had heard the ringing of cattle bells 
ahead; and now, as I came out of the skirts of the wood, I saw 
near upon a dozen cows and perhaps as many more black figures, 
which I conjectured to he children, although the mist had almost 
unrecognizably exaggerated their forms. These were all silently 
following each other round and round in a circle, now taking 
hands, now breaking up with chains and reverences. A dance 
of children appeals to very innocent and lively thoughts; but, at 
nightfall on the marshes, the thing was eerie and fantastic to 
behold. Even I, who am well enough read in Herbert Spencer," 
felt a sort of silence fall for an instant on my mind. The next, 
I was pricking Modestine forward, and guiding her like an unruly 
ship through the open. In a path, she went doggedly ahead of 
her own accord, as before a fair wind; but once on the turf or 
among heather, and the brute became demented. The tendency 
of lost travelers to go round in a circle was developed in her to 
the degree of passion, and it took all the steering I had in me to 
keep even a decently straight course through a single field. 

1 Marshy. 



142 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

While I was thus desperately tacking through the bog, 
children and cattle began to disperse, until only a pair of girls 
remained behind. From these I sought direction on my path. 
The peasantry in general were but little disposed to counsel a 
wayfarer. One old devil simply retired into his house, and 
barricaded the door on my approach; and I might beat and 
shout myself hoarse, he turned a deaf ear. Another, having 
given me a direction which, as I found afterwards, I had mis- 
understood, complacently watched me going wrong without 
adding a sign. He did not care a stalk of parsley if I wandered 
all night upon the hills ! As for these two girls, they were a pair 
of impudent sly sluts, with not a thought but mischief. One 
put out her tongue at me, the other bade me follow the cows; 
and they both giggled and jogged each other's elbows. The 
Beast of Gevaudan ate about a hundred children of this district; 
I began to think of him with sympathy. 

Leaving the girls, I pushed on through the bog, and got into 
another wood and upon a well-marked road. It grew darker 
and darker. Modestine, suddenly beginning to smell mischief, 
bettered the pace of her own accord, and from that time forward 
gave me no trouble. It was the first sign of intelligence I had 
occasion to remark in her. At the same time, the wind fresh- 
ened into half a gale, and another heavy discharge of rain came 
flying up out of the north. At the other side of the wood I 
sighted some red windows in the dusk. This was the hamlet of 
Fouzilhic; three houses on a hillside, near a wood of birches. 
Here I found a delightful old man, who came a little way with 
me in the rain to put me safely on the road for Cheylard. He 
would hear of no reward; but shook his hands above his head 
almost as if in menace, and refused volubly and shrilly, in un- 
mitigated patois. 

All seemed right at last. My thoughts began to turn upon 
dinner and a fireside, and my heart was agreeably softened in 
my bosom. Alas, and I was on the brink of new and greater 



A CAMP IN THE DARK 143 

miseries! Suddenly, at a single swoop, the night fell. I have 
been abroad in many a black night, but never in a blacker. A 
glimmer of rocks, a glimmer of the track where it was well 
beaten, a certain fleecy density, or night within night, for a 
tree, — this was all that I could discriminate. The sky was 
simply darkness overhead; even the flying clouds pursued their 
way invisibly to human eyesight. I could not distinguish my 
hand at arm's length from the track, nor my goad, at the same 
distance, from the meadows or the sky. 

Soon the road that I was following split, after the fashion of 
the country, into three or four in a piece of rocky meadow. 
Since Modestine had shown such a fancy for beaten roads, I 
tried her instinct in this predicament. But the instinct of an 
ass is what might be expected from the name; in half a minute 
she was clambering round and round among some bowlders, as 
lost a donkey as you would wish to see. I should have camped 
long before had I been properly provided; but as this was to be 
so short a stage, I had brought no wine, no bread for myself, 
and little over a pound for my lady friend. Add to this, that I 
and Modestine were both handsomely wetted by the showers. 
But now, if I could have found some water, I should have 
camped at once in spite of all. Water, however, being entirely 
absent, except in the form of rain, I determined to return to 
Fouzilhic, and ask a guide a little further on my way — "a 
little farther lend thy guiding hand." " 

The thing was easy to decide, hard to accomplish. In this 
sensible roaring blackness I was sure of nothing but the direction 
of the wind. To this I set my face; the road had disappeared, 
and I went across country, now in marshy opens, now bafiled 
by walls unscalable to Modestine, until I came once more in 
sight of some red windows. This time they were differently 
disposed. It was not Fouzilhic, but Fouzilhac, a hamlet little 
distant from the other in space, but worlds away in the spirit of 
its inhabitants. I tied Modestine to a gate, and groped forward, 



144 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

stumbling among rocks, plunging mid-leg in bog, until I gained 
the entrance of the village. In the first lighted house there was 
a woman who would not open to me. She could do nothing, she 
cried to me through the door, being alone and lame; but if I 
would apply at the next house, there was a man who could help 
me if he had a mind. 

They came to the next door in force, a man, two women, and 
a girl, and brought a pair of lanterns to examine the wayfarer. 
The man was not ill-looking, but had a shifty smile. He leaned 
against the doorpost, and heard me state my case. All I asked 
was a guide as far as Cheylard. 

'^C'est que, voyez-vous, il fail notr,^' ^ said he. 

I told him that was just my reason for requiring help. 

"I understand that," said he, looking uncomfortable; "mais 
— c'est — de la peine. ^^ ^ 

I was willing to pay, I said. He shook his head. I rose as 
high as ten francs; but he continued to shake his head. "Name 
your own price, then," said I. 

^^Ce n'est pas ga,'^ ^ he said at length, and with evident diffi- 
culty; "but I am not going to cross the door — mats je ne 
sortirai pas de la porte.'' 

I grew a little warm, and asked him what he proposed that I 
should do. 

"Where are you going beyond Cheylard?" he asked by way 
of answer. 

"That is no affair of yours," I returned, for I was not going 
to indulge his bestial curiosity; "it changes nothing in my 
present predicament." 

"C'est vrai, qa,''^ he acknowledged, with a laugh; "om^*, c^est 
vrai. Et d'cu venez vous?^^ ^ 

A better man than I might have felt nettled. 

^ "The trouble is, you see, it is getting dark." 

2 "But, it's some trouble." 3 "That's not it." 

* "That's true, yes, it's true. And where do you come from?" 



A CAMP IN THE DARK 

"O," said I, "I am not going to answer any of your questions, 
so you may spare yourself the trouble of putting them. I am 
late enough already; I want help. If you will not guide me your- 
self, at least help me to find some one else who will." 

"Hold on," he cried suddenly. "Was it not you who passed 
in the meadow while it was still day?" 

"Yes, yes," said the girl, whom I had not hitherto recognized; 
"it was monsieur; I told him to follow the cow." 

"As for you, mademoiselle," said I, "you are Sifarceuse.'^ ^ 

"And," added the man, "what the devil have you done to be 
still here?" 

What the devil, indeed! But there I was. "The great thing," 
said I, "is to make an end of it"; and once more proposed that 
he should help me to find a guide. 

'^Cest que,^^ he said again, "c'est que — tl fait noir.^^ ^ 

"Very well," said I; "take one of your lanterns." 

"No," he cried, drawing a thought backward, and again in- 
trenching himself behind one of his former phrases; "I will not 
cross the door." 

I looked at him. I saw unaffected terror struggling on his 
face with unaffected shame; he was smiling pitifully and wetting 
his lip with his tongue, like a detected schoolboy. I drew a brief 
picture of my state, and asked him what I was to do. 

"I don't know," he said; "I will not cross the door." 

Here was the Beast of Gevaudan, and no mistake. 

"Sir," said I, with my most commanding manners, "you are 
a coward." 

And with that I turned my back upon the family party, who 
hastened to retire within their fortifications; and the famous 
door was closed again, but not till I had overheard the sound of 
laughter. Filia barbara pater barbariorJ'' Let me say it in the 
plural: the Beasts of Gevaudan. 

The lanterns had somewhat dazzled me, and I plowed dis- 
^ A jester. 2 "guj- ^jjen, — but then, it is growing dark." 



TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

tressfuUy among stones and rubbish heaps. All the other 
houses in the village were both dark and silent; and though I 
knocked at here and there a door, my knocking was unanswered. 
It was a bad business; I gave up Fouzilhac with my curses. The 
rain had stopped, and the wind, which still kept rising, began to 
dry my coat and trousers. "Very well," thought I, "water or 
no water, I must camp." But the first thing was to return to 
Modestine. I am pretty sure I was twenty minutes groping for 
my lady in the dark; and if it had not been for the unkindly 
services of the bog, into which I once more stumbled, I might 
have still been groping for her at the dawn. My next business 
was to gain the shelter of a wood, for the wind was cold as well 
as boisterous. How, in this well-wooded district, I should have 
been so long in finding one, is another of the insoluble mysteries 
of this day's adventures; but I will take my oath that I put near 
an hour to the discovery. 

At last black trees began to show upon my left, and, suddenly 
crossing the road, made a cave of unmitigated blackness right in 
front. I call it a cave without exaggeration; to pass below that 
arch of leaves was like entering a dungeon. I felt about until 
my hand encountered a stout branch, and to this I tied Modes- 
tine, a haggard, drenched, desponding donkey. Then I lowered 
my pack, laid it along the wall on the margin of the road, and 
unbuckled the straps. I knew well enough where the lantern 
was; but where were the candles? I groped and groped among 
the tumbled articles, and, while I was thus groping, suddenly I 
touched the spirit-lamp. Salvation ! This would serve my turn 
as well. The wind roared unwearyingly among the trees; I 
could hear the boughs tossing and the leaves churning through 
half a mile of forest; yet the scene of my encampment was not 
only as black as the pit, but admirably sheltered. At the 
second match the wick caught flame. The light was both livid 
and shifting; but it cut me off from the universe, and doubled 
the darkness of the surrounding night. 



A CAMP IN THE DARK 

I tied Modestine more conveniently for herself, and broke up 
half the black bread for her supper, reserving the other half 
against the morning. Then I gathered what I should want 
within reach, took off my wet boots and gaiters, which I wrapped 
in my waterproof, arranged my knapsack for a pillow under the 
flap of my sleeping bag, insinuated my limbs into the interior, 
and buckled myself in like a bambino} I opened a tin of Bologna 
sausage and broke a cake of chocolate, and that was all I had to 
eat. It may sound offensive, but I ate them together, bite by 
bite, by way of bread and meat. All I had to wash down this re- 
volting mixture was neat - brandy: a revolting beverage in itself. 
But I was rare and hungry; ate wtII, and smoked one of the best 
cigarettes in my experience. Then I put a stone in my straw 
hat, pulled the flap of my fur cap over my neck and eyes, put 
my revolver ready to my hand, and snuggled well down among 
the sheepskins. 

I questioned at first if I were sleepy, for I felt my heart beating 
faster than usual, as if with an agreeable excitement to which 
my mind remained a stranger. But as soon as my eyelids 
touched, that subtle glue leaped between them, and they would 
no more come separate. The wind among the trees was my 
lullaby. Sometimes it sounded for minutes together with a 
steady even rush, not rising nor abating; and again it would 
swell and burst like a great crashing breaker, and the trees would 
patter me all over with big drops from the rain of the afternoon. 
Night after night, in my own bedroom in the country, I have 
given ear to this perturbing concert of the wdnd among the 
woods; but whether it was a difference in the trees, or the lie of 
the ground, or because I was myself outside and in the midst of 
it, the fact remains that the wind sang to a different tune among 
these woods of Gevaudan. I hearkened and hearkened; and 
meanwhile sleep took gradual possession of my body and sub- 
dued my thoughts and senses; but still my last waking effort was 
iBaby. 2 Undiluted, 



TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

to listen and distinguish, and my last conscious state was one 
of wonder at the foreign clamor in my ears. 

Twice in the course of the dark hours — once when a stone 
galled me underneath the sack, and again when the poor patient 
Modestine, growing angry, pawed and stamped upon the road — 
I was recalled for a brief while to consciousness, and saw a star 
or two overhead, and the lace-like edge of the foliage against 
the sky. When I awoke for the third time (Wednesday, Sep- 
tember 25th), the world was flooded with a blue light, the mother 
of the dawn. I saw the leaves laboring in the wind and the 
ribbon of the road; and, on turning my head, there was Modes- 
tine tied to a beech, and standing half across the path in an 
attitude of inimitable patience. I closed my eyes again, and 
set to thinking over the experience of the night. I was surprised 
to find how easy and pleasant it had been, even in this tempestu- 
ous weather. The stone which annoyed me would not have been 
there, had I not been forced to camp blindfold in the opaque 
night; and I had felt no other inconvenience except when my 
feet encountered the lantern or the second volume of Peyrat's 
Pastors of the Desert " among the mixed contents of my sleeping 
bag; nay more, I had felt not a touch of cold, and awakened with 
unusually lightsome and clear sensations. 

With that, I shook myself, got once more into my boots and 
gaiters, and breaking up the rest of the bread for Modestine, 
strolled about to see in what part of the world I had awakened. 
Ulysses," left on Ithaca, and with a mind unsettled by the 
goddess, was not more pleasantly astray. I have been after an 
adventure all my life, a pure dispassionate adventure, such as 
befell early and heroic voyagers ; and thus to be found by morn- 
ing in a random woodside nook in Gevaudan — not knowing 
north from south, as strange to my surroundings as the first man 
upon the earth, an inland castaway — was to find a fraction of 
my daydreams realized. I was on the skirts of a little wood of 
birch, sprinkled with a few beeches; behind, it adjoined another 



A CAMP IN THE DARK ^ 149 

wood of fir; and in front it broke up and went down in open order 
into a shallow and meadowy dale. All around there were bare 
hilltops, some near, some far away, as the perspective closed or 
opened, but none apparently much higher than the rest. The 
wind huddled the trees. The golden specks of autumn in the 
birches tossed shiveringly. Overhead the sky was full of strings 
and shreds of vapor, flying, vanishing, reappearing, and turning 
about an axis like tumblers,^ as the wind hounded them through 
heaven. It was wild weather and famishing cold. I ate some 
chocolate, swallowed a mouthful of brandy, and smoked a 
cigarette before the cold should have time to disable my fingers. 
And by the time I had got all this done, and had made my pack 
and bound it on the packsaddle, the day was tiptoe on the thresh- 
old of the east. We had not gone many steps along the lane, 
before the sun, still invisible to me, sent a glow of gold over some 
cloud mountains that lay ranged along the eastern sky. 

The wind had us on the stern, and hurried us bitingly forward. 
I buttoned myself into my coat, and walked on in a pleasant 
frame of mind with all men, when suddenly, at a corner, there 
was Fouzilhic once more in front of me. Nor only that, but 
there was the old gentleman who had escorted me so far the 
night before, running out of his house at sight of me, with hands 
upraised in horror. 

"My poor boy!" he cried, "what does this mean?" 
I told him what had happened. He beat his old hands like 
clappers in a mill, to think how lightly he had let me go; but 
when he heard of the man of Fouzilhac, anger and depression 
seized upon his mind. 

"This time, at least," said he, "there shall be no mistake." 
And he limped along, for he was very rheumatic, for about 
half a mile, and until I was almost within sight of Cheylard, the 
destination I had hunted for so long. 

^ Acrobats. 



150 J'RAVELS WITH A DONKEY 



CHEYLARD AND LUC 



CANDIDLY, it seemed little worthy of all this searching. 
A few broken ends of village, with no particular street, but 
a succession of open places heaped with logs and fagots; a couple 
of tilted crosses, a shrine to our Lady of all Graces " on the 
summit of a little hill; and all this, upon a rattling highland 
river, in the corner of a naked valley. What went ye out for to 
see? " thought I to myself. But the place had a life of its own. 
I found a board commemorating the liberalities of Cheylard for 
the past year, hung up, like a banner, in the diminutive and 
tottering church. In 1877, it appeared, the inhabitants sub- 
scribed forty-eight francs ten centimes for the "Work of the 
Propagation of the Faith." Some of this, I could not help hop- 
ing, would be applied to my native land. Cheylard scrapes 
together halfpence for the darkened souls in Edinburgh; while 
Balquidder and Dunrossness " bemoan the ignorance of Rome. 
Thus, to the high entertainment of the angels, do we pelt each 
other with evangelists, like schoolboys bickering in the snow. 

The inn was again singularly unpretentious. The whole 
furniture of a not ill-to-do family was in the kitchen: the beds, 
the cradle, the clothes, the plate rack, the meal chest, and the 
photograph of the parish priest. There were five children, one 
of whom was set to its morning prayers at the stair-foot soon 
after my arrival, and a sixth would erelong be forthcoming. I 
was kindly received by these good folk. They were much in-^ 
terested in my misadventure. The wood in which I had slept 
belonged to them; the man of Fouzilhac they thought a monster 
of iniquity, and counseled me warmly to summon him at law — • 
" because I might have died." The good wife was horror-stricken 
to see me drink over a pint of uncreamed milk. 

"You will do yourself an evil," she said. "Permit me to boil 
it for you." 

After I had begun the morning on this delightful liquor, she 



C HEY LARD AND LUC 151 

having an infinity of things to arrange, I was permitted, nay re- 
quested, to make a bowl of chocolate for myself. My boots and 
gaiters were hung up to dry, and, seeing me trying to write my 
journal on my knee, the eldest daughter let down a hinged table 
in the chimney corner for my convenience. Here I wrote, drank 
my chocolate, and finally ate an omelette before I left. The 
table was thick with dust; for, as they explained, it was not used 
except in winter weather. I had a clear look up the vent, through 
brown agglomerations of soot and blue vapor, to the sky; and 
whenever a handful of twigs was thrown on to the fire, my legs 
were scorched by the blaze. 

The husband had begun life as a muleteer, and when I came 
to charge Modestine showed himself full of the prudence of his 
art. "You will have to change this package," said he; "it ought 
to be in two parts, and then you might have double the weight." 

I explained that I wanted no more weight; and for no donkey 
hitherto created would I cut my sleeping bag in two. 

"It fatigues her, however," said the innkeeper; "it fatigues 
her greatly on the march. Look." 

Alas, there were her two forelegs no better than raw beef on 
the inside, and blood was running from under her tail. They 
told me when I left, and I was ready to believe it, that before a 
few days I should come to love Modestine like a dog. Three 
days had passed, we had shared some misadventures, and my 
heart was still as cold as a potato towards my beast of burden. 
She was pretty enough to look at; but then she had given proof 
of dead stupidity, redeemed indeed by patience, but aggravated 
by flashes of sorry and ill-judged light-heartedness. And I own 
this new discovery seemed another point against her. What the 
devil was the good of a she-ass if she could not carry a sleeping 
bag and a few necessaries? I saw the end of the fable" rapidly 
approaching, when I should have to carry Modestine. ^Esop 
was the man to know the world! I assure you I set out with 
heavy thoughts upon my short day's march. 



152 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

It was not only heavy thoughts about Modestine that weighted 
me upon the way; it was a leaden business altogether. For first, 
the wind blew so rudely that I had to hold on the pack with one 
hand from Cheylard to Luc; and second, my road lay through 
one of the most beggarly countries in the world. It was like the 
worst of the Scotch Highlands, only worse; cold, naked, and 
ignoble, scant of wood, scant of heather, scant of Hfe. A road 
and some fences broke the unvarying waste, and the line of the 
road was marked by upright pillars, to serve in time of snow. 

Why any one should desire to visit either Luc or Cheylard is 
more than my much-inventing spirit can suppose. For my part, 
I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. 
The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our 
life more nearly; to come down off this feather bed of civilization, 
and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting 
flints. Alas, as we get up in Hfe, and are more preoccupied with 
our affairs, even a holiday is a thing that must be worked for. To 
hold a pack upon a packsaddle against a gale out of the freezing 
north is no high industry, but it is one that serves to occupy and 
compose the mind. And when the present is so exacting, who 
can annoy himself about the future? 

I came out at length above the AlUer. A more unsightly 
prospect at this season of the year it would be hard to fancy. 
Shelving hills rose round it on all sides, here dabbled with wood 
and fields, there rising to peaks alternately naked and hairy with 
pines. The color throughout was black or ashen, and came to a 
point in the ruins of the castle of Luc, which pricked up impu- 
dently from below my feet, carrying on a pinnacle a tall white 
statue of Our Lady, which, I heard with interest, weighed fifty 
quintals,^ and was to be dedicated on the 6th of October. 
Through this sorry landscape trickled the AUier and a tributary 
of nearly equal size, which came down to join it through a broad 
nude valley in Vivarais. The weather had somewhat lightened, 
^ A quintal is 220 pounds. 



FATHER APOLLINARIS 153 

and*the clouds massed in squadron; but the fierce wind still 
hunted them through heaven, and cast great ungainly splashes 
of shadow and sunlight over the scene. 

Luc itself was a straggHng double file of houses wedged be- 
tween hill and river. It had no beauty, nor was there any 
notable feature, save the old castle overhead with its fifty 
quintals of brand-new Madonna. But the inn was clean and 
large. The kitchen, with its two box beds ^ hung with clean 
check curtains, with its wide stone chimney, its chimney shelf 
four yards long and garnished with lanterns and religious 
statuettes, its array of chests and pair of ticking clocks, was the 
very model of what a kitchen ought to be; a melodrama kitchen, 
suitable for bandits or noblemen in disguise. Nor was the scene 
disgraced by the landlady, a handsome, silent, dark old woman, 
clothed and hooded in black like a nun. Even the pubHc bed- 
room had a character of its own, with the long deal tables and 
benches, where fifty might have dined, set out as for a harvest 
home, and the three box beds along the wall. In one of these, 
lying on straw and covered with a pair of table napkins, did I 
do penance all night long in goose flesh and chattering teeth, and 
sigh from time to time as I awakened for my sheepskin sack and 
the lee of some great wood. 



OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 

" / behold 
The House, the Brotherhood austere — 
And what am I, that I am heref 

— Matthew Arnold." 

FATHER APOLLINARIS 

NEXT morning (Thursday, 26th September) I took the road 
in a new order. The sack was no longer doubled, but hung 
at full length across the saddle, a green sausage six feet long with 
^ Folding beds, or berth-like beds. 



154 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

a tuft of blue wool hanging out of either end. It was ■more 
picturesque, it spared the donkey, and, as I began to see, it 
would insure stability, blow high, blow low. But it was not 
without a pang that I had so decided. For although I had pur- 
chased a new cord, and made all as fast as I was able, I was yet 
jealously uneasy lest the flaps should tumble out and scatter my 
effects along the line of march. 

My way lay up the bald valley of the river, along the march ^ 
of Vivarais and Gevaudan. The hills of Gevaudan on the right 
were a little more naked, if anything, than those of Vivarais upon 
the left, and the former had a monopoly of a low dotty under- 
wood that grew thickly in the gorges and died out in solitary 
burrs upon the shoulders and the summits. Black bricks of 
fir wood were plastered here and there upon both sides, and here 
and there were cultivated fields. A railway ran beside the river; 
the only bit of railway in Gevaudan, although there are many 
proposals afoot and surveys being made, and even, as they tell 
me, a station standing ready built in Mende. A year or two 
hence and this may be another world. The desert is beleaguered. 
Now may some Languedocian ^ Wordsworth turn the sonnet 
into patois: "Mountains and vales and floods, heard ye that 
whistle?"" 

At a place called La Bastide I was directed to leave the river, 
and follow a road that mounted on the left among the hills of 
Vivarais, the modern Ardeche; for I was now come within a 
little way of my strange destination, the Trappist " monastery 
of our Lady of the Snows. The sun came out as I left the shelter 
of a pine wood, and I beheld suddenly a fine wild landscape to 
the south. High rocky hills, as blue as sapphire, closed the view, 
and between these lay ridge upon ridge, heathery, craggy, the 
sun glittering on veins of rock, the underwood clambering in the 
hollows, as rude as God made them at the first. There was not 
a sign of man's hand in all the prospect; and indeed not a trace 

^ Boundary, ^ Qf Languedoc, an ancient division of southern France. 



FATHER APOLLINARIS 155 

of his passage, save where generation after generation had 
walked in twisted footpaths, in and out among the beeches, and 
up and down upon the channeled slopes. The mists, which had 
hitherto beset me, were now broken mto clouds, and fled swiftly 
and shone brightly in the sun. I drew a long breath. It was 
grateful to come, after so long, upon a scene of some attraction 
for the human heart. I own I like definite form in what my 
eyes are to rest upon; and if landscapes w^re sold, like the sheets 
of characters " of my boyhood, one penny plain and twopence 
colored, I should go the length of twopence every day of my 
life. 

But if things had grow^n better to the south, it was still 
desolate and inclement near at hand. A spidery cross on every 
hilltop marked the neighborhood of a religious house; and a 
quarter of a mile beyond, the outlook southward opening out 
and growing bolder with every step, a white statue of the Virgin 
at the corner of a young plantation directed the traveler to our 
Lady of the Snows. Here, then, I struck leftward, and pursued 
my way, driving my secular donkey before me, and creaking in 
my secular boots and gaiters, towards the asylum of silence. 

I had not gone very far ere the wind brought to me the clang- 
ing of a bell, and somehow, I can scarce tell why, my heart sank 
within me at the sound. I have rarely approached anything 
with more unaffected terror than the monastery of our Lady of 
the Snows. This it is to have had a Protestant education. And 
suddenly, on turning a corner, fear took hold on me from head 
to foot — slavish superstitious fear; and though I did not stop 
in my advance, yet I went on slowly, like a man who should have 
passed a bourn unnoticed, and strayed into the country of the 
dead. For there upon the narrow new-made road, between the 
stripling pines, was a medieval friar, fighting with a barrowful 
of turfs. Every Sunday of my childhood I used to study the 
Hermits of Marco Sadeler " — enchanting prints, full of w^ood 
and field and medieval landscapes, as large as a county, for the 



156 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

imagination to go a traveling in; and here, sure enough, was one 
of Marco Sadeler's heroes. He was robed in white hke any 
specter, and the hood falling back, in the instancy of his conten- 
tion with the barrow, disclosed a pate as bald and yellow as a 
skull. He might have been buried any time these thousand 
years, and all the lively parts of him resolved into earth and 
broken up with the farmer's harrow. 

I was troubled besides in my mind as to etiquette. Durst I 
address a person who was under a vow of silence? Clearly not. 
But drawing near, I doffed my cap to him with a far-away 
superstitious reverence. He nodded back, and cheerfully ad- 
dressed me. Was I going to the monastery? Who was I? An 
Englishman? Ah, an Irishman, then? 

"No," I said, "a Scotsman." 

A Scotsman? Ah, he had never seen a Scotsman before. And 
he looked me all over, his good, honest, brawny countenance 
shining with interest, as a boy might look upon a lion or an 
alligator. From him I learned with disgust that I could not be 
received at our Lady of the Snows; I might get a meal, perhaps, 
but that was all. And then, as our talk ran on, and it turned out 
that I was not a peddler, but a literary man, who drew land- 
scapes and was going to write a book, he changed his manner of 
thinking as to my reception (for I fear they respect persons even 
in a Trappist monastery), and told me I must be sure to ask for 
the Father Prior, and state my case to him in full. On second 
thoughts he determined to go down with me himself; he thought 
he could manage for me better. Might he say that I was a geog- 
rapher? 

No; I thought, in the interests of truth, he positively might 
not. 

''Very well, then" (with disappointment), "an author." 

It appeared he had been in a seminary with six young Irish- 
men, all priests long since, who had received newspapers and 
kept him informed of the state of ecclesiastical affairs in Eng- 



FATHER APOLLINARIS 157 

land. And he asked me eagerly after Dr. Pusey," for whose 
conversion the good man had continued ever since to pray night 
and morning. 

"I thought he was very near the truth," he said; "and he 
will reach it yet; there is so much virtue in prayer." 

He must be a stiff ungodly Protestant who can take anything 
but pleasure in this kind and hopeful story. While he was thus 
near the subject, the good father asked me if I were a Christian; 
and when he found I was not, or not after his way, he glossed 
it over with great good will. 

The road which we were following, and which this stalwart 
father had made with his own two hands within the space of a 
year, came to a corner, and showed us some white buildings a 
little further on beyond the wood. At the same time, the bell 
once more sounded abroad. We were hard upon the monastery. 
Father Apollinaris (for that was my companion's name) stopped 
me. 

"I must not speak to you down there," he said. "Ask for the 
Brother Porter, and all will be well. But try to see me as you go 
out again through the wood, where I may speak to you. I am 
charmed to have made your acquaintance." 

And then suddenly raising his arms, flapping his fingers, and 
crying out twice, "I must not speak, I must not speak!" he ran 
away in front of me and disappeared into the monastery door. 

I own this somewhat ghastly eccentricity went a good way to 
revive my terrors. But where one was so good and simple, why 
should not all be alike? I took heart of grace, and went forward 
to the gate as fast as Modestine, who seemed to have a disaffec- 
tion for monasteries, would permit. It was the first door, in my 
acquaintance of her, which she had not shown an indecent haste 
to enter. I summoned the place in form, though with a quaking 
heart. Father Michael, the Father Hospitaler," and a pair of 
brown-robed brothers came to the gate and spoke with me 
awhile. I think my sack was the great attraction; it had already 



158 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

beguiled the heart of poor Apollinaris, who had charged me on 
my Ufe to show it to the Father Prior. But whether it was my 
address, or the sack, or the idea speedily published among that 
part of the brotherhood who attend on strangers that I was not 
a peddler after all, I found no difficulty as to my reception. 
Modestine was led away by a layman to the stables, and I and 
my pack were received into our Lady of the Snows. 



THE MONKS 



FATHER MICHAEL, a pleasant, fresh-faced, smiling man, 
perhaps of thirty-five, took me to the pantry, and gave 
me a glass of liqueur to stay me until dinner. We had some 
talk, or rather I should say he listened to my prattle indulgently 
enough, but with an abstracted air, like a spirit with a thing of 
clay. And truly when I remembered that I descanted prin- 
cipally on my appetite, and that it must have been by that time 
more than eighteen hours since Father Michael had so much as 
broken bread, I can well understand that he would find an earthly 
savor in my conversation. But his manner, though superior, 
was exquisitely gracious; and I find I have a lurking curiosity as 
to Father Michael's past. 

The whet administered, I was left alone for a little in the 
monastery garden. This is no more than the main court, laid 
out in sandy paths and beds of party-colored dahlias, and with 
a fountain and a black statue of the Virgin in the center. The 
buildings stand around it foursquare, bleak, as yet unseasoned 
by the years and weather, and with no other features than a 
belfry and a pair of slated gables. Brothers in white, brothers 
in brown, passed silently along the sanded alleys; and when I 
first came out, three hooded monks were kneeling on the terrace 
at their prayers. A naked hill commands the monastery upon 
one side, and the wood commands it on the other. It lies ex- 



THE MONKS 1 59 

posed to wind; the snow falls off and on from October to May and 
sometimes lies six weeks on end; but if they stood in Eden, with 
a climate like heaven's, the buildings themselves would offer the 
same wintry and cheerless aspect; and for my part, on this wild 
September day, before I was called to dinner, I felt chilly in and 
out. 

When I had eaten well and heartily. Brother Ambrose, a 
hearty conversable Frenchman (for all those who wait on 
strangers have the liberty to speak), led me to a little room in 
that part of the building which is set apart for MM. les retrai- 
tants.^ It was clean and whitewashed, and furnished with strict 
necessaries, a crucifix, a bust of the late Pope, the Imitation " in 
French, a book of religious meditations, and the Life of Elizabeth 
Seton," evangeHst, it would appear, of North America and of 
New England in particular. As far as my experience goes, there 
is a fair field for some more evangelization in these quarters; but 
think of Cotton Mather! " I should like to give him a reading 
of this little work in heaven, where I hope he dwells; but perhaps 
he knows all that already, and much more; and perhaps he and 
Mrs. Seton are the dearest friends, and gladly unite their voices 
in the everlasting psalm. Over the table, to conclude the inven- 
tory of the room, hung a set of regulations for MM. les retrai- 
tants: what services they should attend, when they were to tell 
their beads or meditate, and when they were to rise and go to 
rest. At the foot was a notable N.B.: "Ze temps lihre est em- 
ploye a Vexamen de conscience, a la confession, a faire de bonnes 
resolutions, &c." ^ To make good resolutions, indeed! You 
might talk as fruitfully of making the hair grow on your head. 

I had scarce explored my niche when Brother Ambrose re- 
turned. An English boarder, it appeared, would like to speak 
with me. I professed my willingness, and the friar ushered in a 
fresh, young, little Irishman of fifty, a deacon of the Church, 

1 "The free time is to be used in the examination of the conscience, in 
confession, in making good resolutions, etc." 



i6o TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

arrayed in strict canonicals, and wearing on his head what, in 
default of knowledge, I can only call the ecclesiastical shako.^ 
He had lived seven years in retreat at a convent of nuns in 
Belgium, and now five at our Lady of the Snows; he never saw 
an English newspaper; he spoke French imperfectly, and had he 
spoken it like a native, there was not much chance of conversa- 
tion where he dwelt. With this, he was a man eminently so- 
ciable, greedy of news, and simple-minded like a child. If I was 
pleased to have a guide about the monastery, he was no less 
delighted to see an English face and hear an English tongue. 

He showed me his own room, where he passed his time among 
breviaries," Hebrew bibles, and the Waverley novels. Thence 
he led me to the cloisters, into the chapter house, through the 
vestry, where the brothers' gowns and broad straw hats were 
hanging up, each with his religious name upon a board, — names 
full of legendary suavity and interest, such as Basil, Hilarion, 
Raphael, or Pacifique; into the Hbrary, where were all the works 
of Veuillot" and Chateaubriand, and the Odes et Ballades, if you 
please, and even Moliere, to say nothing of innumerable fathers " 
and a great variety of local and general historians. Thence my 
good Irishman took me round the workshops, where brothers 
bake bread, and make cartwheels, and take photographs; where 
one superintends a collection of curiosities, and another a gallery 
of rabbits. For in a Trappist monastery each monk has an 
occupation of his own choice, apart from his religious duties and 
the general labors of the house. Each must sing in the choir, if 
he has a voice and ear, and join in the haymaking if he has a 
hand to stir; but in his private hours, although he must be 
occupied, he may be occupied on what he likes. Thus I was told 
that one brother was engaged with literature; while Father 
ApoUinaris busies himself in making roads, and the Abbot em- 
ploys himself in binding books. It is not so long since this 
Abbot was consecrated, by the way; and on that occasion, by a 
1 A high military hat. 



THE MONKS l6l 

special grace, his mother was permitted to enter the chapel and 
witness the ceremony of consecration. A proud day for her to 
have a son a mitered abbot; it makes you glad to think they let 
her in. 

In all these journeyings to and fro, many silent fathers and 
brethren fell in our way. Usually they paid no more regard to 
our passage than if we had been a cloud; but sometimes the good 
deacon had a permission to ask of them, and it was granted by a 
peculiar movement of the hands, almost like that of a dog's 
paws in swimming, or refused by the usual negative signs, and 
in either case with lowered eyelids and a certain air of contrition, 
as of a man who was steering very close to evil. 

The monks, by special grace of their Abbot, were still taking 
two meals a day; but it was already time for their grand fast, 
w^hich begins somewhere in September and lasts till Easter, and 
during which they eat but once in the twenty-fours, and that at 
two in the afternoon, twelve hours after they have begun the 
toil and vigil of the day. Their meals are scanty, but even of 
these they eat sparingly; and though each is allowed a small 
carafe ^ of wine, many refrain from this indulgence. Without 
doubt, the most of mankind grossly overeat themselves; our 
meals serve not only for support, but as a hearty and natural 
diversion from the labor of life. Although excess may be hurtful, 
I should have thought this Trappist regimen defective. And I 
am astonished, as I look back, at the freshness of face and cheer- 
fulness of manner of all whom I beheld. A happier nor a 
healthier company I should scarce suppose that I have ever seen. 
As a matter of fact, on this bleak upland, and with the incessant 
occupation of the monks, life is of an uncertain tenure, and 
death no infrequent visitor, at our Lady of the Snows. This, at 
least, was what was told me. But if they die easily, they must 
live healthily in the meantime, for they seemed all firrn of flesh 
and high in color; and the only morbid sign that I could observe, 

1 A bottle. 



i62 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

an unusual brilliancy of eye, was one that served rather to in- 
crease the general impression of vivacity and strength. 

Those with whom I spoke were singularly sweet tempered, 
with what I can only call a holy cheerfulness in air and conversa- 
tion. There is a note, in the direction to visitors, telling them 
not to be offended at the curt speech of those who wait upon 
them, since it is proper to monks to speak little. The note 
might have been spared; to a man the hospitalers were all 
brimming with innocent talk, and, in my experience of the 
monastery, it was easier to begin than to break off a conversa- 
tion. With the exception of Father Michael, who was a man of 
the world, they showed themselves full of kind and healthy 
interest in all sorts of subjects — in politics, in voyages, in my 
sleeping sack — and not without a certain pleasure in the sound 
of their own voices. 

As for those who are restricted to silence, I can only wonder 
how they bear their solemn and cheerless isolation. And yet, 
apart from any view of mortification, I can see a certain policy, 
not only in the exclusion of women, but in this vow of silence. 
I have had some experience of lay phalansteries,^ of an artistic, 
not to say a bacchanahan, character; and seen more than one 
association easily formed and yet more easily dispersed. With 
a Cistercian rule," perhaps they might have lasted longer. In 
the neighborhood of women it is but a touch-and-go association 
that can be formed among defenseless men; the stronger elec- 
tricity is sure to triumph; the dreams of boyhood, the schemes 
of youth, are abandoned after an interview of ten minutes, and 
the arts and sciences, and professional male jollity, deserted at 
once for two sweet eyes and a caressing accent. And next after 
this, the tongue is the great divider. 

I am almost ashamed to pursue this worldly criticism of a 
religious rule; but there is yet another point in which the Trap- 
pist order appeals to me as a model of wisdom. By two in the 
1 Informal organizations of people living in common. 



THE MONKS 163 

morning the clapper goes upon the bell, and so on, hour by hour, 
and sometimes quarter by quarter, till eight, the hour of rest; so 
infinitesimally is the day divided among different occupations. 
The man who keeps rabbits, for example, hurries from his 
hutches to the chapel, the chapter room, or the refectory, all 
day long: every hour he has an office to sing," a duty to perform; 
from two, when he rises in the dark, till eight, when he returns 
to receive the comfortable gift of sleep, he is upon his feet and 
occupied with manifold and changing business. I know many 
persons, worth several thousands in the year, who are not so 
fortunate in the disposal of their lives. Into how many houses 
would not the note of the monastery bell, dividing the day into 
manageable portions, bring peace of mind and healthful activity 
of body? We speak of hardships, but the true hardship is to be 
a dull fool, and permitted to mismanage life in our own dull and 
foolish manner. 

From this point of view, we may perhaps better understand 
the monk's existence. A long novitiate and every proof of con- 
stancy of mind and strength of body is required before admission 
to the order; but I could not find that many were discouraged. 
In the photographer's studio, which figures so strangely among 
the outbuildings, my eye was attracted by the portrait of a 
young fellow in the uniform of a private of foot. This was one 
of the novices, who came of the age for service, and marched and 
drilled and mounted guard for the proper time among the garri- 
son of Algiers. Here was a man who had surely seen both sides 
of life before deciding; yet as soon as he was set free from service 
he returned to finish his novitiate. 

This austere rule entitles a man to heaven as by right. When 
the Trappist sickens, he quits not his habit; he lies in the bed of 
death as he has prayed and labored in his frugal and silent exist- 
ence; and when the Liberator comes, at the very moment, even 
before they have carried him in his robe to lie his little last in the 
chapel among continual chantings, joy bells break forth, as if 



1 64 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

for a marriage, from the slated belfry, and proclaim throughout 
the neighborhood that another soul has gone to God. 

At night, under the conduct of my kind Irishman, I took my 
place in the gallery to hear compline ^ and Salve Regina,^ with 
which the Cistercians bring every day to a conclusion. There 
were none of those circumstances which strike the Protestant as 
childish or as tawdry in the public offices of Rome. A stern 
simplicity, heightened by the romance of the surroundings, 
spoke directly to the heart. I recall the whitewashed chapel, 
the hooded figures in the choir, the lights alternately occluded 
and revealed, the strong manly singing, the silence that ensued, 
the sight of cowled heads bowed in prayer, and then the clear 
trenchant beating of the bell, breaking in to show that the last 
office was over and the hour of sleep had come; and when I re- 
member, I am not surprised that I made my escape into the 
court with somewhat whirling fancies, and stood like a man be- 
wildered in the windy starry night. 

But I was weary; and when I had quieted my spirits with 
Elizabeth Seton's memoirs — a dull work — the cold and the 
raving of the wind among the pines — for my room was on that 
side of the monastery which adjoins the woods — disposed me 
readily to slumber. I was wakened at black midnight, as it 
seemed, though it was really two in the morning, by the first 
stroke upon the bell. All the brothers were then hurrying to the 
chapel; the dead in life, at this untimely hour, were already be- 
ginning the uncomforted labors of their day. The dead in life — 
there was a chill reflection. And the words of a French song 
came back into my memory, telling of the best of our mixed 

existence : 

"Que t'as de belles filles, 
Girofle! Girofla! 
Que t'as de belles filles, 
U Amour les comptera!'' ' 
^ The last service of common prayer for the day. 
2 An antiphonal hymn to the Virgin Mary. 



THE BOARDERS 165 

And I blessed God that I was free to wander, free to hope, and 
free to love. 



THE BOARDERS 



BUT there was another side to my residence at our Lady of 
the Snows. At this late season there were not many 
boarders; and yet I was not alone in the pubHc part of the 
monastery. This itself is hard by the gate, with a small dining 
room on the gromid floor, and a whole corridor of cells similar to 
mine upstairs. I have stupidly forgotten the board for a regular 
retraitant; but it was somewhere between three and five francs a 
day, and I think most probably the first. Chance visitors Hke 
myself might give what they chose as a freewill offering, but 
nothing was demanded. I may mention that when I was going 
away. Father Michael refused twenty francs as excessive. I 
explained the reasoning which led me to offer him so much; but 
even then, from a curious point of honor, he would not accept 
it with his own hand. "I have no right to refuse for the monas- 
tery," he explained, "but I should prefer if you would give it to 
one of the brothers." 

I had dined alone, because I arrived late; but at supper I 
found two other guests. One was a country parish priest, who 
had walked over that morning from the seat of his cure ^ near 
Mende to enjoy four days of solitude and prayer. He was a 
grenadier in person, with the hale color and circular wrinkles of 
a peasant; and as he complained much of how he had been im- 
peded by his skirts upon the march, I have a vivid fancy portrait 
of him, striding along, upright, big-boned, with kilted ^ cassock,^ 
through the bleak hills of Gevaudan. The other was a short, 
grizzHng, thickset man, from forty-five to fifty, dressed in tweed 

^ Parish. 2 Tucked up. 3 ^ jQ^g clerical coat. 



l66 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

with a knitted spencer and the red ribbon of a decoration " in 
his button-hole. This last was a hard person to classify. He was 
an old soldier, who had seen service and risen to the rank of 
commandant; and he retained some of the brisk decisive man- 
ners of the camp. On the other hand, as soon as his resignation 
was accepted, he had come to our Lady of the Snows as a boarder, 
and, after a brief experience of its ways, had decided to remain 
as a novice. Already the new life was beginning to modify his 
appearance; already he had acquired somewhat of the quiet and 
smiling air of the brethren; and he was as yet neither an officer 
nor a Trappist, but partook of the character of each. And cer- 
tainly here was a man in an interesting nick ^ of life. Out of the 
noise of cannon and trumpets, he was in the act of passing into 
this still country bordering on the grave, where men sleep nightly 
in their graveclothes, and, like phantoms, communicate by 
signs. 

At supper we talked politics. I make it my business, when I 
am in France, to preach political good will and moderation, and 
to dwell on the example of Poland, much as some alarmists in 
England dwell on the example of Carthage." The priest and the 
Commandant assured me of their sympathy with all I said, and 
made a heavy sighing over the bitterness of contemporary feel- 
ing. 

"Why, you cannot say anything to a man with which he does 
not absolutely agree," said I, "but he flies up at you in a 
temper." 

They both declared that such a state of things was anti- 
christian. 

While we were thus agreeing, what should my tongue stumble 
upon but a word in praise of Gambetta's " moderation. The 
old soldier's countenance was instantly suffused with blood; 
with the palms of his hands he beat the table like a naughty 
child. 

^ Critical moment. 



THE BOARDERS I 67 

^^ Comment, monsieur?'' he shouted. "Comment ?^ Gambetta 
moderate? Will you dare to justify these words?" 

But the priest had not forgotten the tenor of our talk. And 
suddenly, in the height of his fury, the old soldier found a warn- 
ing look directed on his face; the absurdity of his behavior was 
brought home to him in a flash; and the storm came to an abrupt 
end, without another word. 

It was only in the morning, over our coffee (Friday, Septem-. 
ber 27th), that this couple found out I was a heretic. I suppose 
I had misled them by some admiring expressions as to the mo- 
nastic Hfe around us; and it was only by a point-blank question 
that the truth came out. I had been tolerantly used, both by 
simple Father Apollinaris and astute Father Michael; and the 
good Irish deacon, when he heard of my religious weakness, had 
only patted me upon the shoulder and said, ''You must be a 
Catholic and come to heaven." But I was now among a different 
sect of orthodox. These two men were bitter and upright and 
narrow, like the worst of Scotsmen, and indeed, upon my heart, 
I fancy they were worse. The priest snorted aloud like a battle 
horse. 

"-E/ vans pretendez mourir dans cette espece de croyance?'' ^ he 
demanded; and there is no type used by mortal printers large 
enough to qualify his accent. 

I humbly indicated that I had no design of changing. 

But he could not away with such a monstrous attitude. " No, 
no," he cried; "you must change. You have come here, God 
has led you here, and you must embrace the opportunity." 

I made a slip in policy; I appealed to the family affections, 
though I was speaking to a priest and a soldier, two classes of 
men circumstantially divorced from the kind and homely ties of 
life. 

"Your father and mother?" cried the priest. ''Very well; you 
will convert them in their turn when you go home." 

1 "What, sir? what?" ^ " And you mean to die in that sort of faith?" 



l68 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

I think I see my father's face! I would rather tackle the 
Gaetulian lion " in his den than embark on such an enterprise 
against the family theologian. 

But now the hunt was up; priest and soldier were in full cry 
for my conversion; and the Work of the Propagation of the 
Faith, for which the people of Cheylard subscribed forty-eight 
francs ten centimes during 1877, was being gallantly pursued 
against myself. It was an odd but most effective proselytizing. 
They never sought to convince me in argument, where I might 
have attempted some defense; but took it for granted that I was 
both ashamed and terrified at my position, and urged me solely 
on the point of time. Now, they said, when God had led me to 
our Lady of the Snows, now was the appointed hour. 

''Do not be withheld by false shame," observed the priest, for 
my encouragement. 

For one who feels very similarly to all sects of religion, and 
who has never been able, even for a moment, to weigh seriously 
the merit of this or that creed on the eternal side of things, how- 
ever much he may see to praise or blame upon the secular and 
temporal side, the situation thus created was both unfair and 
painful. I committed my second fault in tact, and tried to plead 
that it was all the same thing in the end, and we were all drawing 
near by different sides to the same kind and undiscriminating 
Friend and Father. That, as it seems to lay spirits, would be 
the only gospel worthy of the name. But different men think 
differently; and this revolutionary aspiration brought down the 
priest with all the terrors of the law. He launched into harrow- 
ing details of hell. The damned, he said — on the authority of 
a little book which he had read not a week before, and which, to 
add conviction to conviction, he had fully intended to bring 
along with him in his pocket — Avere to occupy the same attitude 
through all eternity in the midst of dismal tortures. And as he 
thus expatiated, he grew in nobility of aspect with his enthu- 
siasm. 



THE BOARDERS 169 

As a result the pair concluded that I should seek out the Prior, 
since the Abbot was from home, and lay my case immediately 
before him. 

^^Cest mon conseil comme ancien militaire,^' observed the 
Commandant; ''et celiii de monsieur comme pretre.^' ^ 

"Out,'' added the cure, sententiously nodding; "comme ancien 
militaire — et comme pretre.'' 

At this moment, whilst I was somewhat embarrassed how to 
answer, in came one of the monks, a little brown fellow, as lively 
as a grig,^ and with an Italian accent, who threw himself at once 
into the contention, but in a milder and more persuasive vein, 
as befitted one of these pleasant brethren. Look at him, he said. 
The rule was very hard; he would have dearly liked to stay in 
his own country, Italy — it w^as well known how beautiful it 
was, the beautiful Italy; but then there were no Trappists in 
Italy; and he had a soul to save; and here he was. 

I am afraid I must be at bottom, what a cheerful Indian critic 
has dubbed me, "sl faddling hedonist"; ^ for this description of 
the brother's motives gave me somewhat of a shock. I should 
have preferred to think he had chosen the life for its own sake, 
and not for ulterior purposes; and this shows how profoundly I 
was out of sympathy with these good Trappists, even when I 
was doing my best to sympathize. But to the cure the argument 
seemed decisive. 

''Hear that!" he cried. ''And I have seen a marquis here, a 
marquis, a marquis" — he repeated the holy word three times 
over — "and other persons high in society; and generals. And 
here, at your side, is this gentleman, w^ho has been so many 
years in armies — decorated, an old warrior. And here he is, 
ready to dedicate himself to God." 

1 was by this time so thoroughly embarrassed that I pleaded 
cold feet, and made my escape from the apartment. It was a 

^ " It is my advice as an old soldier, and that of this gentleman as a priest." 

2 A cricket. ^ A trifler, who regards pleasure as the chief good in life. 



I70 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

furious windy morning, with a sky much cleared, and long and 
potent intervals of sunshine; and I wandered until dinner in the 
wild country towards the east, sorely staggered and beaten upon 
by the gale, but rewarded with some striking views. 

At dinner the Work of the Propagation of the Faith was re- 
commenced, and on this occasion still more distastefully to me. 
The priest asked me many questions as to the contemptible 
faith of my fathers, and received my replies with a kind of 
ecclesiastical titter. 

"Your sect," he said once; "for I think you will admit it 
would be doing it too much honor to call it a religion." 

"As you please, monsieur," said I. "La parole est a vous.'^ ^ 

At length I grew annoyed beyond endurance; and although 
he was on his own ground and, what is more to the purpose, an 
old man, and so holding a claim upon my toleration, I could not 
avoid a protest against this uncivil usage. He was sadly dis- 
countenanced. 

"I assure you," he said, "I have no incHnation to laugh in my 
heart. I have no other feeling but interest in your soul." 

And there ended my conversion. Honest man! he was no 
dangerous deceiver; but a country parson, full of zeal and faith. 
Long may he tread Gevaudan with his kilted skirts — a man 
strong to walk and strong to comfort his parishioners in death! 
I dare say he would beat bravely through a snowstorm where 
his duty called him; and it is not always the most faithful be- 
liever who makes the cunningest apostle. 

1 "The word is of your own choosing." 



ACROSS THE GOULET 171 



UPPER GEVAUDAN {continued) 

" The bed was made, the room was fit, 
By punctual eve the stars were lit; 
The air was sweet, the water ran; 
No need was there for maid or man, 
When we put up, my ass and I, 
At God's green caravanserai.'^ 

— Old Play. 

ACROSS THE GOULET 

THE wind fell during dinner, and the sky remained dear; so 
it was under better auspices that I loaded Modestine before 
the monastery gate. My Irish friend accompanied me so far on 
the way. As we came through the wood, there was Pere Apolli- 
naire hauling his barrow; and he too quitted his labors to go with 
me for perhaps a hundred yards, holding my hand between both 
of his in front of him. I parted first from one and then from the 
other with unfeigned regret, but yet with the glee of the traveler 
who shakes off the dust of one stage before hurrying forth upon 
another. Then Modestine and I mounted the course of the 
AUier, which here led us back into Gevaudan towards its sources 
in the forest of Mercoire. It was but an inconsiderable burn 
before we left its guidance. Thence, over a hill, our way lay 
through a naked plateau, until we reached Chasserades at sun- 
down. 

The company in the inn kitchen that night were all men em- 
ployed in survey for one of the projected railways. They were 
intelligent and conversable, and we decided the future of France 
over hot wine, until the state of the clock frightened us to rest. 
There were four beds in the little upstairs room; and we slept 
six. But I had a bed to myself, and persuaded them to leave 
the window open. 



172 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

"fl"e, bourgeois; it est cinq heures! " ^ was the cry that wakened 
me in the morning (Saturday, September 28th). The room was 
full of a transparent darkness, which dimly showed me the other 
three beds and the five different nightcaps on the pillows. But 
out of the window the dawn was growing ruddy in a long belt 
over the hilltops, and day was about to flood the plateau. The 
hour was inspiriting; and there seemed a promise of calm 
weather, which was perfectly fulfilled. I was soon under way 
with Modestine. The road lay for a while over the plateau, 
and then descended through a precipitous village into the val- 
ley of the Chassezac. This stream ran among green meadows, 
well hidden from the world by its steep banks; the broom was 
in flower, and here and there was a hamlet sending up its smoke. 

At last the path crossed the Chassezac upon a bridge, and, 
forsaking this deep hollow, set itself to cross the mountain of 
La Goulet. It wound up through Lestampes by upland fields 
and woods of beech and birch, and with every corner brought 
me into an acquaintance with some new interest. Even in 
the gully of the Chassezac my ear had been struck by a noise 
like that of a great bass bell ringing at the distance of many 
miles; but this, as I continued to mount and draw nearer to it, 
seemed to change in character, and I found at length that it 
came from some one leading flocks afield to the note of a rural 
horn. The narrow street of Lestampes stood full of sheep, 
from wall to wall — black sheep and white, bleating like the 
birds in spring, and each one accompanying himself upon the 
sheep bell round his neck. It made a pathetic concert, all in 
treble. A little higher, and I passed a pair of men in a tree 
with pruning hooks, and one of them was singing the music of 
a hourree} Still further, and when I was already threading the 
birches, the crowing of cocks came cheerfully up to my ears, 
and along with that the voice of a flute discoursing a deliberate 
and plaintive air from one of the upland villages. I pictured 
1 "Hey, sir, it's five o'clock!" 2 ^ dance tune. 



ACROSS THE GOULET 1 73 

to myself some grizzled, apple-cheeked, country schoolmaster 
fluting in his bit of a garden in the clear autumn sunshine. All 
these beautiful and interesting sounds filled my heart with an 
unwonted expectation; and it appeared to me that, once past 
this range which I was mounting, I should descend into the 
garden of the world. Nor was I deceived, for I was now done 
with rains and winds and a bleak country. The first part of my 
journey ended here; and this was like an induction of sweet 
sounds into the other and more beautiful. 

There are other degrees of feyness,'' as of punishment, besides 
the capital; and I was now led by my good spirits into an ad- 
venture which I relate in the interest of future donkey drivers. 
The road zigzagged so widely on the hillside that I chose a short 
cut by map and compass, and struck through the dwarf woods 
. to catch the road again upon a higher level. It was my one se- 
rious conflict with Modes tine. She would none of my short cut; 
she turned in my face, she backed, she reared; she, whom I had 
hitherto imagined to be dumb, actually brayed with a loud 
hoarse flourish, Hke a cock crowing for the dawn. I plied the 
goad with one hand; with the other, so steep was the ascent, 
I had to hold on the packsaddle. Half a dozen times she was 
nearly over backwards on the top of me; half a dozen times, 
from sheer weariness of spirit, I was nearly giving it up, and 
leading her down again to follow the road. But I took the thing 
as a wager, and fought it through. I was surprised, as I went 
on my way again, by what appeared to be chill raindrops falling 
on my hand, and more than once looked up in wonder at the 
cloudless sky. But it was only sweat which came dropping 
from my brow. 

Over the summit of the Goulet there was no marked road — 
only upright stones posted from space to space to guide the 
drovers. The turf underfoot was springy and well scented. I 
had no company but a lark or two, and met but one bullock 
cart between Lestampes and Bleymard. In front of me I saw 



174 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

a shallow valley, and beyond that the range of the Lozere, 
sparsely wooded and well enough modeled in the flanks, but 
straight and dull in outline. There was scarce a sign of culture; 
only about Bleymard, the white highroad from Villefort to 
Mende traversed a range of meadows, set with spiry poplars, 
and sounding from side to side with the bells of flocks and herds. 



A NIGHT AMONG THE PINES 

FROM Bleymard after dinner, although it was already late, 
I set out to scale a portion of the Lozere. An ill-marked 
stony drove-road guided me forward; and I met nearly half a 
dozen bullock carts descending from the woods, each laden with 
a whole pine tree for the winter's firing. At the top of the woods, 
which do not climb very high upon this cold ridge, I struck left- 
ward by a path among the pines, until I hit on a dell of green 
turf, where a streamlet made a little spout over some stones to 
serve me for a water tap. ''In a more sacred or sequestered 
bower . . . nor nymph, nor f annus, haunted." " The trees 
were not old, but they grew thickly round the glade: there was 
no outlook, except northeastward upon distant hilltops, or 
straight upward to the sky; and the encampment felt secure 
and private like a room. By the time I had made my arrange- 
ments and fed Modestine, the day was already beginning to de- 
cline. I buckled myself to the knees into my sack and made a 
hearty meal; and as soon as the sun went down, I pulled my 
cap over my eyes and fell asleep. 

Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in the 
open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and per- 
fumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of Na- 
ture. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked 
between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber 



A NIGHT AMONG THE PINES 175 

to the man who sleeps afield. All night long he can hear Nature 
breathing deeply and freely; even as she takes her rest, she turns 
and smiles; and there is one stirring hour unknown to those who 
dwell in houses, when a wakeful influence goes abroad over the 
sleeping hemisphere, and all the outdoor world are on their feet. 
It is then that the cock first crows, not this time to announce 
the dawn, but like a cheerful watchman speeding the course of 
night. Cattle awake on the meadows; sheep break their fast 
on dewy hillsides, and change to a new lair among the ferns; and 
houseless men, who have lain down with the fowls, open their 
dim eyes and behold the beauty of the night. 

At what inaudible summons, at what gentle touch of Nature, 
are all these sleepers thus recalled in the same hour to life? Do 
the stars rain down an influence, or do we share some thrill of 
mother earth below our resting bodies ? Even shepherds and 
old country folk, who are the deepest read in these arcana,^ 
have not a guess as to the means or purpose of this nightly resur- 
rection. Towards two in the morning they declare the thing 
takes place; and neither know nor inquire further. And at 
least it is a pleasant incident. We are disturbed in our slumber 
only, like the luxurious Montaigne," "that we may the better 
and more sensibly relish it." We have a moment to look upon 
the stars, and there is a special pleasure for some minds in the 
reflection that we share the impulse with all outdoor creatures 
in our neighborhood, that we have escaped out of the Bastille" 
of civilization, and are become, for the time being, a mere kindly 
animal and a sheep of Nature's flock. 

When that hour came to me among the pines, I weakened 
thirsty. My tin was standing by me half full of water. I 
emptied it at a draft; and feeling broad awake after this internal 
cold aspersion, sat upright to make a cigarette. The stars were 
clear, colored, and jewel-like, but not frosty. A faint silvery 
vapor stood for the Milky Way. All around me the black fir 

1 Mysteries. 



176 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

points stood upright and stock-still. By the whiteness of the 
packsaddle, I could see Modestine walking round and round at 
the length of her tether; I could hear her steadily munching at 
the sward; but there was not another sound, save the inde- 
scribable quiet talk of the runnel over the stones. I lay lazily 
smoking and studying the color of the sky, as we call the void 
of space, from where it showed a reddish gray behind the pines 
to where it showed a glossy blue-black between the stars. As 
if to be more like a peddler, I wear a silver ring. This I could see 
faintly shining as I raised or lowered the cigarette; and at each 
whiff the inside of my hand was illuminated, and became for a 
second the highest light in the landscape. 

A faint wind, more like a moving coolness than a stream of 
air, passed down the glade from time to time; so that even in my 
great chamber the air was being renewed all night long. I 
thought with horror of the inn at Chasserades and the congre- 
gated nightcaps; with horror of the nocturnal prowesses of 
clerks and students, of hot theaters and pass-keys and close 
rooms. I have not often enjoyed a more serene possession of 
myself, nor felt more independent of material aids. The outer 
world, from which we cower into our houses, seemed after all a 
gentle habitable place; and night after night a man's bed, it 
seemed, was laid and waiting for him in the fields, w^here God 
keeps an open house. I thought I had rediscovered one of those 
truths which are revealed to savages and hid from political 
economists: at the least, I had discovered a new pleasure for 
myself. And yet even while I was exulting in my solitude I 
became aware of a strange lack. I wished a companion to lie 
near me in the starlight, silent and not moving, but ever within 
touch. For there is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, 
and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect. And to 
live out of doors with the woman a man loves is of all lives the 
most complete and free. 

As I thus lay, between content and longing, a faint noise stole 



A NIGHT AMONG THE PINES 177 

towards me through the pines. I thought, at first, it was the 
crowing of cocks or the barking of dogs at some very distant 
farm; but steadily and gradually it took articulate shape in my 
ears, until I became aware that a passenger was going by upon 
the highroad in the valley, and singing loudly as he went. There 
was more of good will than grace in his performance; but he 
trolled with ample lungs; and the sound of his voice took hold 
upon the hillside and set the air shaking in the leafy glens. I 
have heard people passing by night in sleeping cities; some of 
them sang; one, I remember, played loudly on the bagpipes. I 
have heard the rattle of a cart or carriage spring up suddenly 
after hours of stillness, and pass, for some minutes, within the 
range of my hearing as I lay abed. There is a romance about all 
who are abroad in the black hours, and with something of a thrill 
we try to guess their business. But here the romance was 
double: first, this glad passenger, lit internally with wine, w^ho 
sent up his voice in music through the night; and then I, on the 
other hand, buckled into my sack, and smoking alone in the 
pine woods between four and five thousand feet towards the 
stars. 

When I awoke again (Sunday, 29th September), many of the 
stars had disappeared; only the stronger companions of the night 
still burned visibly overhead; and away towards the east I saw 
a faint haze of light upon the horizon, such as had been the 
Milky Way when I was last aw^ake. Day was at hand. I lit my 
lantern, and by its glowworm light put on my boots and 
gaiters; then I broke up some bread for Modestine, filled my can 
at the water tap, and lit my spirit lamp to boil myself some 
chocolate. The blue darkness lay along in the glade where I 
had so sweetly slumbered; but soon there was a broad streak of 
orange melting into gold along the mountain tops of Vivarais. 
A solemn glee possessed my mind at this gradual and lovely 
coming in of day. I heard the runnel with delight; I looked 
round me for something beautiful and unexpected; but the 



178 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

still black pine trees, the hollow glade, the munching ass, re- 
mained unchanged in figure. Nothing had altered but the 
light, and that, indeed, shed over all a spirit of life and of 
breathing peace, and moved me to a strange exhilaration. 

I drank my water chocolate, which was hot if it was not rich, 
and strolled here and there, and up and down about the glade. 
While I was thus delaying, a gush of steady wind, as long as a 
heavy sigh, poured direct out of the quarter of the morning. It 
was cold, and set me sneezing. The trees near at hand tossed 
their black plumes in its passage; and I could see the thin 
distant spires of pine along the edge of the hill rock slightly to 
and fro against the golden east. Ten minutes after, the sun- 
light spread at a gallop along the hillside, scattering shadows 
and sparkles, and the day had come completely. 

I hastened to prepare my pack, and tackle the steep ascent 
that lay before me; but I had something on my mind. It was 
only a fancy; yet a fancy will sometimes be importunate. I had 
been most hospitably received and punctually served in my 
green caravanserai.-^ The room was airy, the water excellent, 
and the dawn had called me to a moment. I say nothing of the 
tapestries or the inimitable ceiling, nor yet of the view which I 
commanded from the windows; but I felt I was in some one's 
debt for all this liberal entertainment. And so it pleased me, in 
a half-laughing way, to leave pieces of money on the turf as I 
went along, until I had left enough for my night's lodging. I 
trust they did not fall to some rich and churHsh drover. 

^ An inn. 



ACROSS THE LOZERE 179 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 

" We traveled in the print of olden wars; 
Yet all the land was green; 
And love we found, and peace, 
Where fire and war had been. 
They pass and smile, the children of the sword — 
No more the sword they wield; 
And 0, how deep the corn 
Along the battlefield!^^ 

— W. P. Bannatyne." 

ACROSS THE LOZERE 

THE track that I had followed in the evening soon died out, 
and I continued to follow over a bald turf ascent a row of 
stone pillars, such as had conducted me across the Goulet. It 
was already warm. I tied my jacket on the pack, and walked 
in my knitted waistcoat. Modestine herself was in high spirits, 
and broke of her own accord, for the first time in my experience, 
into a jolting trot that set the oats swashing in the pocket of my 
coat. The view, back upon the northern Gevaudan, extended 
with every step; scarce a tree, scarce a house, appeared upon 
the fields of wild hill that ran north, east, and west, all blue and 
gold in the haze and sunlight of the morning. A multitude of 
little birds kept sweeping and twittering about my path; they 
perched on the stone pillars, they pecked and strutted on the 
turf, and I saw them circle in volleys in the blue air, and show, 
from time to time, translucent flickering wings between the sun 
and me. 

Almost from the first moment of my march, a faint large noise, 
like a distant surf, had filled my ears. Sometimes I was tempted 
to think it the voice of a neighboring waterfall, and sometimes 
a subjective result of the utter stillness of the hill. But as I 



i8o TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

continued to advance, the noise increased and became like the 
hissing of an enormous tea urn, and at the same time breaths of 
cool air began to reach me from the direction of the summit. At 
length I understood. It was blowing stiffly from the south upon 
the other slope of the Lozere, and every step that I took I was 
drawing nearer to the wind. 

Although it had been long desired, it was quite unexpectedly 
at last that my eyes rose above the summit. A step that seemed 
no way more decisive than many other steps that had preceded 
it — and, ''like stout Cortez when, with eagle eyes, he stared on 
the Pacific," " I took possession, in my own name, of a new 
quarter of the world. For behold, instead of the gross turf 
rampart I had been mounting for so long, a view into the hazy 
air of heaven, and a land of intricate blue hills below my feet. 

The Lozere lies nearly east and west, cutting Gevaudan into 
two unequal parts; its highest point, this Pic de Finiels, on which 
I was then standing, rises upwards of five thousand six hundred 
feet above the sea, and in clear weather commands a view over 
all lower Languedoc to the Mediterranean Sea. I have spoken 
with people who either pretended or believed that they had seen, 
from the Pic de Finiels, white ships sailing by Montpellier and 
Cette. Behind was the upland northern country through which 
my way had lain, peopled by a dull race, without wood, without 
much grandeur of hill form, and famous in the past for little 
beside wolves. But in front of me, half veiled in sunny haze, 
lay a new Gevaudan, rich, picturesque, illustrious for stirring 
events. Speaking largely, I was in the Cevennes at Monastier, 
and during all my journey; but there is a strict and local sense 
in which only this confused and shaggy country at my feet has 
any title to the name, and in this sense the peasantry employ the 
word. These are the Cevennes with an emphasis: the Cevennes 
of the Cevennes. In that undecipherable labyrinth of hills, a 
war of bandits, a war of wild beasts, raged for two years between 
the Grand Monarch " with all his troops and marshals on the 



ACROSS THE LOZkRE i8i 

one hand, and a few thousand Protestant mountaineers upon 
the other. A hundred and eighty years ago, the Camisards " 
held a station even on the Lozere, where I stood; they had an 
organization, arsenals, a military and religious hierarchy; their 
affairs were "the discourse of every coffeehouse" in London; 
England sent fleets in their support; their leaders prophesied 
and murdered; with colors and drums, and the singing of old 
French psalms, their bands sometimes affronted daylight, 
marched before walled cities, and dispersed the generals of the 
king; and sometimes at night, or in masquerade, possessed 
themselves of strong castles, and avenged treachery upon their 
allies and cruelty upon their foes. There, a hundred and eighty 
years ago, was the chivalrous Roland, " Count and Lord Roland, 
generalissimo of the Protestants in France," grave, silent, im- 
perious, pock-marked ex-dragoon, whom a lady followed in his 
wanderings out of love. There was Cavalier, a baker's appren- 
tice with a genius for war, elected brigadier of Camisards at 
seventeen, to die at fifty-five the English governor of Jersey.'^ 
There again was Castanet, a partisan leader in a voluminous 
peruke ^ and with a taste for controversial divinity. Strange 
generals, who moved apart to take counsel with the God of 
Hosts, and fled or offered battle, set sentinels or slept in an un- 
guarded camp, as the Spirit whispered to their hearts! And 
there, to follow these and other leaders, was the rank and file of 
prophets and disciples, bold, patient, indefatigable, hardy to 
run upon the mountains, cheering their rough life with psalms, 
eager to fight, eager to pray, listening devoutly to the oracles of 
brainsick children, and mystically putting a grain of wheat 
among the pewter balls with which they charged their muskets. 
I had traveled hitherto through a dull district, and in the 
track of nothing more notable than the child-eating Beast of 
Gevaudan, the Napoleon Buonaparte of wolves. But now I was 
to go down into the scene of a romantic chapter — or, better, a 

^ A wig. 



l82 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

romantic footnote — in the history of the world. What was 
left of all this bygone dust and heroism? I was told that Protes- 
tantism still survived in this head seat of Protestant resistance; 
so much the priest himself had told me in the monastery parlor. 
But I had yet to learn if it were a bare survival, or a lively and 
generous tradition. Again, if in the northern Cevennes the 
people are narrow in religious judgments, and more filled with 
zeal than charity, what was I to look for in this land of persecu- 
tion and reprisal — in a land where the tyranny of the Church 
produced the Camisard rebellion, and the terror of the Cami- 
sards threw the Catholic peasantry into legalized revolt upon 
the other side, so that Camisard and Florentin " skulked for each 
other's lives among the mountains? 

Just on the brow of the hill, where I paused to look before me, 
the series of stone pillars came abruptly to an end; and only a 
little below, a sort of track appeared and began to go down a 
breakneck slope, turning like a corkscrew as it went. It led 
into a valley between falling hills, stubbly with rocks like a 
reaped field of corn, and floored further down with green mead- 
ows. I followed the track with precipitation; the steepness of 
the slope, the continual agile turning of the line of descent, and 
the old unwearied hope of finding something new in a new 
country, all conspired to lend me wings. Yet a little lower and 
a stream began, collecting itself together out of many foimtains, 
and soon making a glad noise among the hills. Sometimes it 
would cross the track in a bit of waterfall, with a pool, in which 
Modestine refreshed her feet. 

The whole descent is like a dream to me, so rapidly was it 
accomplished. I had scarcely left the summit ere the valley had 
closed round my path, and the sun beat upon me, walking in a 
stagnant lowland atmosphere. The track became a road, and 
went up and down in easy undulations. I passed cabin after 
cabin, but all seemed deserted; and I saw not a human creature, 
nor heard any sound except that of the stream. I was, however, 



ACROSS THE LOZERE 183 

in a different country from the day before. The stony skeleton 
of the world was here vigorously displayed to sun and air. The 
slopes were steep and changeful. Oak trees clung along the hills, 
well grown, wealthy in leaf, and touched by the autumn with 
strong and luminous colors. Here and there another stream 
would fall in from the right or the left, down a gorge of snow- 
white and tumultuary bowlders. The river in the bottom (for it 
was rapidly growing a river, collecting on all hands as it trotted 
on its way) here foamed awhile in desperate rapids, and there 
lay in pools of the most enchanting sea green shot with watery 
browns. As far as I have gone, I have never seen a river of so 
changeful and delicate a hue; crystal was not more clear, the 
meadows were not by half so green; and at every pool I saw I 
felt a thrill of longing to be out of these hot, dusty, and material 
garments, and bathe my naked body in the mountain air and 
water. All the time as I went on I never forgot it was the 
Sabbath; the stillness was a perpetual reminder; and I heard in 
spirit the church bells clamoring all over Europe, and the psalms 
of a thousand churches. 

At length a human sound struck upon my ear — a cry 
strangely modulated between pathos and derision; and looking 
across the valley, I saw a little urchin sitting in a meadow, with 
his hands about his knees, and dwarfed to almost comical 
smallness by the distance. But the rogue had picked me out as 
I went down the road, from oak wood on to oak wood, driving 
Modestine; and he made me the compliments of the new country 
in this tremulous high-pitched salutation. And as all noises are 
lovely and natural at a sufficient distance, this also, coming 
through so much clean hill air and crossing all the green valley, 
sounded pleasant to my ear, and seemed a thing rustic, like the 
oaks or the river. 

A little after, the stream that I was following fell into the 
Tarn, at Pont de Montvert of bloody memory. 



1 84 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 



PONT DE MONTVERT 



ONE of the first things I encountered in Pont de Montvert 
was, if I remember rightly, the Protestant temple; but 
this was but the type of other novelties. A subtle atmosphere 
distinguishes a town in England from a town in France, or even 
in Scotland. At Carlisle " you can see you are in one country; 
at Dumfries," thirty miles away, you are as sure that you are in 
the other. I should find it difficult to tell in what particulars 
Pont de Montvert differed from Monastier or Langogne, or even 
Bleymard; but the difference existed, and spoke eloquently to 
the eyes. The place, with its houses, its lanes, its glaring river 
bed, wore an indescribable air of the South. 

All was Sunday bustle in the streets and in the public house, 
as all had been Sabbath peace among the mountains. There 
must have been near a score of us at dinner by eleven before 
noon; and after I had eaten and drunken, and sat writing up my 
journal, I suppose as many more came dropping in one after 
another, or by twos and threes. In crossing the Lozere I had 
not only come among new natural features, but moved into the 
territory of a different race. These people, as they hurriedly 
dispatched their viands in an intricate swordplay of knives, 
questioned and answered me with a degree of intelligence which 
excelled all that I had met, except among the railway folk at 
Chasserades. They had open telling faces, and were lively both 
in speech and manner. They not only entered thoroughly into 
the spirit of my little trip, but more than one declared, if he 
were rich enough, he would like to set forth on such another. 

Even physically there was a pleasant change. I had not seen 
a pretty woman since I left Monastier, and there but one. Now 
of the three who sat down with me to dinner, one was certainly 
not beautiful — a poor timid thing of forty, quite troubled at 



PONT DE MONTVERT 185 

this roaring table d'hdte, whom I squired ^ and helped to wine, 
and pledged ^ and tried generally to encourage, with quite a 
contrary effect; but the other two, both married, were both more 
handsome than the average of women. And Clarisse? What 
shall I say of Clarisse? She waited the table with a heavy 
placable nonchalance, like a performing cow; her great gray eyes 
were steeped in amorous languor; her features, although fleshy, 
were of an original and accurate design; her mouth had a curl; 
her nostril spoke of dainty pride; her cheek fell into strange and 
interesting lines. It was a face capable of strong emotion, and, 
with training, it offered the promise of delicate sentiment. It 
seemed pitiful to see so good a model left to country admirers 
and a country way of thought. Beauty should at least have 
touched society; then, in a moment, it throws off a weight that 
lay upon it, it becomes conscious of itself, it puts on an elegance, 
learns a gait and a carriage of the head, and, in a moment, 
patet dea? Before I left I assured Clarisse of my hearty admira- 
tion. She took it like milk, without embarrassment or wonder, 
merely looking at me steadily with her great eyes; and I own 
the result upon myself w^as some confusion. If Clarisse could 
read English, I should not dare to add that her figure was un- 
worthy of her face. Hers was a case for stays; but that may 
perhaps grow better as she gets up in years. 

Pont de Montvert, or Greenhill Bridge, as we might say at 
home, is a place memorable in the story of the Camisards. It 
was here that the war broke out; here that those southern 
Covenanters slew their Archbishop Sharpe." The persecution 
on the one hand, the febrile enthusiasm on the other, are almost 
equally difficult to understand in these quiet modern days, and 
with our easy modern beliefs and disbeliefs. The Protestants 
were one and all beside their right minds with zeal and sorrow. 
They were all prophets and prophetesses. Children at the 

^ Attended as a squire. 2 Drank her health, 

^ The goddess stands revealed. 



1 86 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

breast would exhort their parents to good works. "A child of 
fifteen months at Quissac spoke from its mother's arms, agitated 
and sobbing, distinctly and with a loud voice." Marshal 
Villars " has seen a town where all the women "seemed possessed 
by the devil," and had trembling fits, and uttered prophecies 
publicly upon the streets. A prophetess of Vivarais was hanged 
at Montpellier because blood flowed from her eyes and nose, 
and she declared that she was weeping tears of blood for the 
misfortunes of the Protestants. And it was not only women and 
children. Stalwart dangerous fellows, used to swing the sickle 
or to wield the forest ax, were likewise shaken with strange 
paroxysms, and spoke oracles with sobs and streaming tears. 
A persecution unsurpassed in violence had lasted near a score of 
years, and this was the result upon the persecuted; hanging, 
burning, breaking on the wheel, had been in vain; the dragoons 
had left their hoof marks over all the countryside; there were 
men rowing in the galleys," and women pining in the prisons of 
the Church; and not a thought was changed in the heart of any 
upright Protestant. 

Now the head and forefront of the persecution — after 
Lamoignon de Baville " — Francois de Langlade du Chayla 
(pronounced Cheiila), Archpriest of the Cevennes and Inspector 
of Missions in the same country, had a house in which he some- 
times dwelt in the town of Pont de Montvert. He was a con- 
scientious person, who seems to have been intended by nature 
for a pirate, and now fifty-five, an age by which a man has 
learned all the moderation of which he is capable. A missionary 
in his youth in China, he there suffered martyrdom, was left for 
dead, and only succored and brought back to life by the charity 
of a pariah.^ We must suppose the pariah devoid of second 
sight, and not purposely malicious in this act. Such an experi- 
ence, it might be thought, would have cured a man of the desire 
to persecute; but the human spirit is a thing strangely put to- 

^ An outcast. 



PONT DE MONTVERT 187 

gether; and, having been a Christian martyr, Du Chayla be- 
came a Christian persecutor. The Work of the Propagation of 
the Faith went roundly forward in his hands. His house in 
Pont de Montvert served him as a prison. There he plucked 
out the hairs of the beard, and closed the hands of his prisoners 
upon live coals, to convince them that they were deceived in 
their opinions. And yet had not he himself tried and proved 
the inefi&cacy of these carnal arguments among the Buddhists 
in China? 

Not only was life made intolerable in Languedoc, but flight 
was rigidly forbidden. One Massip, a muleteer, and well ac- 
quainted with the mountain paths, had already guided several 
troops of fugitives in safety to Geneva; and on him, with another 
convoy, consisting mostly of women dressed as men, Du Chayla, 
in an evil hour for himself, laid his hands. The Sunday follow- 
ing, there was a conventicle of Protestants in the woods of 
Altefage upon Mount Bouges; where there stood up one Seguier 
— Spirit Seguier, as his companions called him — a wool carder, 
tall, black-faced, and toothless, but a man full of prophecy. He 
declared, in the name of God, that the time for submission had 
gone by, and they must betake themselves to arms for the 
deliverance of their brethren and the destruction of the priests. 

The next night, 24th July, 1702, a sound disturbed the In- 
spector of Missions as he sat in his prison house at Pont de 
Montvert; the voices of many men upraised in psalmody drew 
nearer and nearer through the town. It was ten at night; he 
had his court about him, priests, soldiers, and servants, to the 
number of twelve or fifteen, and now dreading the insolence of a 
conventicle below his very windows, he ordered forth his soldiers 
to report. But the psalm-singers were already at his door, fifty 
strong, led by the inspired Seguier, and breathing death. To 
their summons, the archpriest made answer like a stout old 
persecutor, and bade his garrison fire upon the mob. One 
Camisard (for, according to some, it was in this night's work 



l88 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

that they came by the name) fell at this discharge; his comrades 
burst in the door with hatchets and a beam of wood, overran 
the lower story of the house, set free the prisoners, and finding 
one of them in the vine, sl sort of Scavenger's Daughter " of the 
place and period, redoubled in fury against Du Chayla, and 
sought by repeated assaults to carry the upper floors. But he, 
on his side, had given absolution to his men, and they bravely 
held the staircase. 

"Children of God,'' cried the prophet, "hold your hands. 
Let us burn the house, with the priest and the satellites of 
Baal." " 

The fire caught readily. Out of an upper window Du Chayla 
and his men lowered themselves into the garden by means of 
knotted sheets; some escaped across the river under the bullets 
of the insurgents; but the archpriest himself fell, broke his thigh, 
and could only crawl into the hedge. What were his reflections 
as this second martyrdom drew near? A poor, brave, besotted, 
hateful man, who had done his duty resolutely according to his 
light both in the Cevennes and China. He found at least one 
telling word to say in his defense; for when the roof fell in and 
the upbursting flames discovered his retreat, and they came and 
dragged him to the public place of the town, raging and calling 
him damned — "If I be damned," said he, " why should you 
also damn yourselves?" 

Here was a good reason for the last; but in the course of his 
inspectorship he had given many stronger which all told in a 
contrary direction; and these he was now to hear. One by one, 
Seguier first, the Camisards drew near and stabbed him. "This," 
they said, "is for my father broken on the wheel. This for my 
brother in the galleys. That for my mother or my sister im- 
prisoned in your cursed convents." Each gave his blow and his 
reason; and then all kneeled and sang psalms around the body 
till the dawn. With the dawn, still singing, they defiled away 
towards Frugeres, further up the Tarn, to pursue the work of 



PONT DE MONT VERT" 189 

vengeance, leaving Du Chayla's prison house in ruins, and his 
body pierced with two-and-fifty wounds upon the pubhc place. 

'Tis a wild night's work, with its accompaniment of psalms; 
and it seems as if a psalm must always have a sound of threaten- 
ing in. that town upon the Tarn. But the story does not end, 
even so far as concerns Pont de Montvert, with the departure 
of the Camisards. The career of Seguier was brief and bloody. 
Two more priests and a whole family at Ladeveze, from the 
father to the servants, fell by his hand or by his orders; and yet 
he was but a day or two at large, and restrained all the time by 
the presence of the soldiery. Taken at length by a famous 
soldier of fortune. Captain Poul, he appeared unmoved before 
his judges. 

"Your name?" they asked. 

"Pierre Seguier." 

"Why are you called Spirit?" 

"Because the Spirit of the Lord is with me." 

"Your domicile?" 

"Lately in the desert, and soon in heaven." 

"Have you no remorse for your crimes?" 

"I have committed none. My soul is like a garden full of 
shelter and of fountains. ^^ 

At Pont de Montvert, on the 12th of August, he had his right 
hand stricken from his body, and was burned alive. And his soul 
was like a garden? So perhaps was the soul of Du Chayla, the 
Christian martyr. And perhaps if you could read in my soul, 
or I could read in yours, our own composure might seem little 
less surprising. 

Du Chayla's house still stands, with a new roof, beside one of 
the bridges of the town; and if you are curious you may see the 
terrace garden into which he dropped. 



I90 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 



IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 

ANEW road leads from Pont de Montvert to Florae by the 
valley of the Tarn; a smooth sandy ledge, it runs about 
halfway between the summit of the cliffs and the river in the 
bottom of the valley; and I went in and out, as I followed it, 
from bays of shadow into promontories of afternoon sun. This 
was a pass Hke that of Killiecrankie," a deep turning gully in the 
hills, with the Tarn making a wonderful hoarse uproar far below, 
and craggy summits standing in the sunshine high above. A 
thin fringe of ash trees ran about the hilltops, like ivy on a ruin; 
but on the lower slopes, and far up every glen, the Spanish 
chestnut trees stood each foursquare to heaven under its tented 
foHage. Some were planted, each on its own terrace no larger 
than a bed; some, trusting in their roots, found strength to grow 
and prosper and be straight and large upon the rapid slopes of 
the valley; others, where there was a margin to the river, stood 
marshaled in a line and mighty like cedars of Lebanon. Yet 
even where they grew most thickly they were not to be thought 
of as a wood, but as a herd of stalwart individuals ; and the dome 
of each tree stood forth separate and large, and as it were a Httle 
hill, from among the domes of its companions. They gave forth 
a faint sweet perfume which pervaded the air of the afternoon; 
autumn had put tints of gold and tarnish in the green; and the 
sun so shone through and kindled the broad foliage, that each 
chestnut was relieved against another, not in shadow, but in 
Hght. A humble sketcher here laid down his pencil in despair. 
I wish I could convey a notion of the growth of these noble 
trees; of how they strike out boughs like the oak, and trail 
sprays of drooping foliage like the willow; of how they stand on 
upright fluted columns like the pillars of a church; or like the 
olive, from the most shattered bole can put out smooth and 
youthful shoots, and begin a new life upon the ruins of the old. 



IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 191 

Thus they partake of the nature of many different trees; and 
even their prickly topknots, seen near at hand against the sky, 
have a certain palm-like air that impresses the imagination. 
But their individuality, although compounded of so many 
elements, is but the richer and the more original. And to look 
down upon a level filled with these knolls of foliage, or to see a 
clan of old unconquerable chestnuts cluster "like herded ele- 
phants" upon the spur of a mountain, is to rise to higher 
thoughts of the powers that are in Nature. 

Between Modestine's laggard humor and the beauty of the 
scene, we made Httle progress all that afternoon; and at last 
finding the sun, although still far from setting, was already 
beginning to desert the narrow valley of the Tarn, I began to 
cast about for a place to camp in. This was not easy to find; the 
terraces were too narrow, and the ground, where it was unter- 
raced, was usually too steep for a man to lie upon. I should 
have slipped all night, and awakened towards morning with my 
feet or my head in the river. 

After perhaps a mile, I saw, some sixty feet above the road, a 
little plateau large enough to hold my sack, and securely para- 
peted by the trunk of an aged and enormous chestnut. Thither, 
with infinite trouble, I goaded and kicked the reluctant Modes- 
tine, and there I hastened to unload her. There was only room 
for myself upon the plateau, and I had to go nearly as high 
again before I found so much as standing room for the ass. It 
was on a heap of rolling stones, on an artificial terrace, certainly 
not five feet square in all. Here I tied her to a chestnut, and 
having given her corn and bread and made a pile of chestnut 
leaves, of which I found her greedy, I descended once more to 
my own encampment. 

The position was unpleasantly exposed. One or two carts 
went by upon the road; and as long as daylight lasted I con- 
cealed myself, for all the world like a hunted Camisard, behind 
my fortification of vast chestnut trunk; for I was passionately 



192 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

afraid of discovery and the visit of jocular persons in the night. 
Moreover, I saw that I must be early awake; for these chestnut 
gardens had been the scene of industry no farther gone than on 
the day before. The slope was strewn with lopped branches, 
and here and there a great package of leaves was propped 
against a trunk; for even the leaves are serviceable, and the 
peasants use them in winter by way of fodder for their animals. 
I picked a meal in fear and trembling, half lying down to hide 
myself from the road; and I dare say I was as much concerned 
as if I had been a scout from Joani's " band above upon the 
Lozere, or from Salomon's across the Tarn, in the old times of 
psalm-singing and blood. Or, indeed, perhaps more; for the 
Camisards had a remarkable confidence in God; and a tale 
comes back into my memory of how the Count of Gevaudan, 
riding with a party of dragoons and a notary at his saddlebow 
to enforce the oath of fidelity in all the country hamlets, entered 
a valley in the woods, and found Cavaher and his men at dinner, 
gayly seated on the grass, and their hats crowned with box tree 
garlands, while fifteen women washed their linen in the stream. 
Such was a field festival in 1703; at that date Antony Watteau " 
would be painting similar subjects. 

This was a very different camp from that of the night before 
in the cool and silent pine woods. It was warm and even stifling 
in the valley. The shrill song of frogs, like the tremolo note of a 
whistle with a pea in it, rang up from the river side before the 
sun was down. In the growing dusk, faint rustlings began to 
run to and fro among the fallen leaves; from time to time a faint 
chirping or cheeping noise would fall upon my ear; and from 
time to time I thought I could see the movement of something 
swift and indistinct between the chestnuts. A profusion of 
large ants swarmed upon the ground; bats whisked by, and 
mosquitoes droned overhead. The long boughs with their 
bunches of leaves hung against the sky like garlands; and those 
immediately above and around me had somewhat the air of a 



IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 1 93 

trellis which should have been wrecked and half overthrown in 
a gale of wind. 

Sleep for a long time fled my eyelids; and just as I was begin- 
ning to feel quiet stealing over my limbs, and settHng densely 
on my mind, a noise at my head startled me broad awake again, 
and, I will frankly confess it, brought my heart into my mouth. 
It was such a noise as a person would make scratching loudly 
with a finger nail, it came from under the knapsack which 
served me for a pillow, and it was thrice repeated before I had 
time to sit up and turn about. Nothing was to be seen, nothing 
more was to be heard, but a few of these mysterious rustlings 
far and near, and the ceaseless accompaniment of the river and 
the frogs. I learned next day that the chestnut gardens are in- 
fested by rats; rustling, chirping, and scraping were probably all 
due to these; but the puzzle, for the moment, was insoluble, and 
I had to compose myself for sleep, as best I could, in wondering 
uncertainty about my neighbors. 

I was wakened in the gray of the morning (Monday, 30th Sep- 
tember) by the sound of footsteps not far off upon the stones, 
and opening my eyes, I beheld a peasant going by among the 
chestnuts by a footpath that I had not hitherto observed. He 
turned his head neither to the right nor to the left, and disap- 
peared in a few strides among the foliage. Here was an escape ! 
But it was plainly more than time to be moving. The peasantry 
were abroad; scarce less terrible to me in my nondescript position 
than the soldiers of Captain Poul to an undaunted Camisard. 
I fed Modestine with what haste I could; but as I was returning 
to my sack, I saw a man and a boy come down the hillside in a 
direction crossing mine. They unintelligibly hailed me, and I 
replied with inarticulate but cheerful sounds, and hurried for- 
ward to get into my gaiters. 

The pair, who seemed to be father and son, came slowly up to 
the plateau, and stood close beside me for some time in silence. 
The bed was open, and I saw with regret my revolver lying 



194 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

patently disclosed on the blue wool. At last, after they had 
looked me all over, and the silence had grown laughably embar- 
rassing, the man demanded in what seemed unfriendly tones: — 

"You have slept here? " 

''Yes," said I. "As you see." 

"Why?" he asked. 

"My faith," I answered lightly, "I was tired." 

He next inquired where I was going and what I had had for 
dinner; and then, without the least transition, "C'est bien,'' ^ he 
added, "come along." And he and his son, without another 
word, turned off to the next chestnut tree but one, which they 
set to pruning. The thing had passed off more simply than I 
hoped. He was a grave, respectable man; and his unfriendly* 
voice did not imply that he thought he was speaking to a crim- 
inal, but merely to an inferior. 

I was soon on the road, nibbling a cake of chocolate and 
seriously occupied with a case of conscience. Was I to pay for 
my night's lodging? I had slept ill, the bed was full of fleas in 
the shape of ants, there was no water in the room, the very 
dawn had neglected to call me in the morning. I might have 
missed a train, had there been any in the neighborhood to catch. 
Clearly, I was dissatisfied with my entertainment; and I decided 
I should not pay unless I met a beggar. 

The valley looked even lovelier by morning; and soon the 
road descended to the level of the river. Here, in a place where 
many straight and prosperous chestnuts stood together, making 
an aisle upon a swarded terrace, I made my morning toilet in 
the water of the Tarn. It was marvelously clear, thrillingly 
cool; the soapsuds disappeared as if by magic in the swift cur- 
rent, and the white bowlders gave one a model for cleanliness. 
To wash in one of God's rivers in the open air seems to me a sort 
of cheerful solemnity or semi-pagan act of worship. To dabble 
among dishes in a bedroom may perhaps make clean the body; 
1 "It is well." 



IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 195 

but the imagination takes no share in such a cleansing. I went 
on with a light and peaceful heart, and sang psalms to the 
spiritual ear as I advanced. 

Suddenly up came an old woman, who point-blank demanded 
alms. 

''Good," thought I; "here comes the waiter with the bill." 

And I paid for my night's lodging on the spot. Take it how 
you please, but this was the first and the last beggar that I met 
with during all my tour. 

A step or two farther I was overtaken by an old man in a 
brown nightcap, clear-eyed, weather-beaten, with a faint excited 
smile. A little girl followed him, driving two sheep and a goat; 
but she kept in our wake, while the old man walked beside me 
and talked about the morning and the valley. It was not much 
past six; and for healthy people who have slept enough, that is 
an hour of expansion and of open and trustful talk. 

"Connaissez-vous le Seigneur? " ^ he said at length. 

I asked him what Seigneur he meant; but he only repeated 
the question with more emphasis and a look in his eyes denot- 
ing hope and interest. 

"Ah!" said I, pointing upwards, ''I understand you now." 
Yes, I know Him; He is the best of acquaintances." 

The old man said he was delighted. "Hold," he added, 
striking his bosom; "it makes me happy here." There were a 
few who knew the Lord in these valleys, he went on to tell me; 
not many, but a few. "Many are called," he quoted, "and few 
chosen." 

"My father," said I, "it is not easy to say who know the 
Lord; and it is none of our business. Protestants and CathoHcs, 
and even those who worship stones, may know Him and be 
known by Him; for He has made all." 

I did not know I was so good a preacher. 

The old man assured me he thought as I did, and repeated his 
^ "Do you know the Lord?" 



196 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

expressions of pleasure at meeting me. "We are so few," he 
said. "They call us Moravians " here; but down in the depart- 
ment of Gard, where there are also a good number, they are 
called Derbists," after an English pastor." 

I began to understand that I was figuring, in questionable 
taste, as a member of some sect to me unknown; but I was more 
pleased with the pleasure of my companion than embarrassed 
by my own equivocal position. Indeed I can see no dishonesty 
in not avowing a difference; and especially in these high matters, 
where we have all a sufficient assurance that, whoever may be in 
the wrong, we ourselves are not completely in the right. The 
truth is much talked about; but this old man in a brown night- 
cap showed himself so simple, sweet, and friendly that I am not 
unwilling to profess myself his convert. He was, as a matter of 
fact, a Plymouth Brother. Of what that involves in the way of 
doctrine I have no idea nor the time to inform myself; but I 
know right well that we are all embarked upon a troublesome 
world, the children of one Father, striving in many essential 
points to do and to become the same. And although it was 
somewhat in a mistake that he shook hands with me so often 
^nd showed himself so ready to receive my words, that was a 
mistake of the truth-finding sort. For charity begins blindfold; 
and only through a series of similar misapprehensions rises at 
length into a settled principle of love and patience, and a firm 
belief in all our fellow men. If I deceived this good old man, in 
the like manner I would willingly go on to deceive others. And 
if ever at length, out of our separate and sad ways, we should all 
come together into one common house, I have a hope, to which 
I cling dearly, that my mountain Plymouth Brother will hasten 
to shake hands with me again. 

Thus, talking like Christian and Faithful " by the way, he 
and I came down upon a hamlet by the Tarn. It was but a 
humble place, called La Vernede, with less than a dozen houses, 
and a Protestant chapel on a knoll. Here he dwelt; and here, 



IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 197 

at the inn, I ordered my breakfast. The inn was kept by an 
agreeable young man, a stonebreaker on the road, and his sister, 
a pretty and engaging girl. The village schoolmaster dropped 
in to. speak with the stranger. And these were all Protestants — 
a fact which pleased me more than I should have expected; and, 
what pleased me still more, they seemed all upright and simple 
people. The Plymouth Brother hung round me with a sort of 
yearning interest, and returned at least thrice to make sure I 
was enjoying my meal. His behavior touched me deeply at the 
time, and even now moves me in recollection. He feared to 
intrude, but he would not willingly forego one moment of my 
society; and he seemed never weary of shaking me by the hand. 

When all the rest had drifted off to their day's work, I sat for 
near half an hour with the young mistress of the house, who 
talked pleasantly over her seam of the chestnut harvest, and the 
beauties of the Tarn, and old family affections, broken up when 
young folk go from home, yet still subsisting. Hers, I am sure, 
was a sweet nature, with a country plainness and much delicacy 
underneath; and he who takes her to his heart will doubtless be 
a fortunate young man. 

The valley below La Vernede pleased me more and more as I 
went forward. Now the hills approached from either hand, 
naked and crumbling, and walled in the river between cliffs; 
and now the valley widened and became green. The road led 
me past the old castle of Miral on a steep; past a battlemented 
monastery, long since broken up and turned into a church and 
parsonage; and past a cluster of black roofs, the village of Co- 
cures, sitting among vineyards and meadows and orchards thick 
with red apples, and where, along the highway, they were 
knocking down walnuts from the roadside trees, and gathering 
them in sacks and baskets. The hills, however much the vale 
might open, were still tall and bare, with cliffy battlements and 
here and there a pointed summit; and the Tarn still rattled 
through the stones with a mountain noise. I had been led, by 



igS TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

bagmen of a picturesque turn of mind, to expect a horrific 
country after the heart of Byron; " but to my Scotch eyes it 
seemed smihng and plentiful, as the weather still gave an impres- 
sion of high summer to my Scotch body; although the chestnuts 
were already picked out by the autumn, and the poplars, that 
here began to mingle with them, had turned into pale gold 
against the approach of winter. 

There was something in this landscape, smiling although wild, 
that explained to me the spirit of the Southern Covenanters. 
Those who took to the hills for conscience' sake in Scotland had 
all gloomy and bedeviled thoughts; for once that they received 
God's comfort they would be twice engaged with Satan; but the 
Camisards had only bright and supporting visions. They dealt 
much more in blood, both given and taken; yet I find no obses- 
sion of the Evil One in their records. With a light conscience, 
they pursued their life in these rough times and circumstances. 
The soul of Seguier, let us not forget, was Hke a garden. They 
knew they were on God's side, with a knowledge that has no 
parallel among the Scots; for the Scots, although they might be 
certain of the cause, could never rest confident of the person. 

"We flew," says one old Camisard, "when we heard the sound 
of psalm-singing, we flew as if with wings. We felt within us an 
animating ardor, a transporting desire. The feehng cannot be 
expressed in words. It is a thing that must have been expe- 
rienced to be understood. However weary we might be, we 
thought no more of our weariness and grew light, so soon as the 
psalms fell upon our ears." 

The valley of the Tarn and the people whom I met at La 
Vernede not only explain to me this passage, but the twenty 
years of suffering which those who were so stiff and so bloody 
when once they betook themselves to war, endured with the 
meekness of children and the constancy of saints and peasants. 



FLORAC 199 

FLORAC 

ON a branch of the Tarn stands Florae, the seat of a sub- 
prefecture," with an old castle, an alley of planes, many 
quaint street corners, and a live fountain welling from the hill. 
It is notable, besides, for handsome women, and as one of the 
two capitals, Alais being the other, of the country of the Cami- 
sards. 

The landlord of the inn took me, after I had eaten, to an ad- 
joining cafe^ where I, or rather my journey, became the topic of 
the afternoon. Every one had some suggestion for my guidance; 
and the subprefectorial map was fetched from the subprefecture 
itself, and much thumbed among coffee cups and glasses of 
liqueur. Most of these kind advisers were Protestant, though I 
observed that Protestant and Catholic intermingled in a very 
easy manner; and it surprised me to see what a lively memory 
still subsisted of the religious war. Among the hills of the south- 
west, by Mauchline," Cumnock, or Carsphairn, in isolated farms 
or in the manse, serious Presbyterian people still recall the days 
of the great persecution, and the graves of local martyrs are still 
piously regarded. But in towns and among the so-called better 
classes, I fear that these old doings have become an idle tale. If 
you met a mixed company in the King's Arms at Wigtown, it is 
not likely that the talk would run on Covenanters. Nay, at 
Muirkirk of Glenluce, I found the beadle's wife had not so much 
as heard of Prophet Peden.'' But these Cevenols were proud of 
their ancestors in quite another sense; the war was their chosen 
topic; its exploits were their own patent of nobility; and where 
a man or a race has had but one adventure, and that heroic, we 
must expect and pardon some prolixity of reference. They told 
me the country was still full of legends hitherto uncollected; 
I heard from them about Cavalier's descendants — not direct 
descendants, be it understood, but only cousins or nephews — 



200 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

who were still prosperous people in the scene of the boy-general's 
exploits; and one farmer had seen the bones of old combat- 
ants dug up into the air of an afternoon in the nineteenth 
century, in a field where the ancestors had fought, and the 
great-grandchildren were peaceably ditching. 

Later in the day one of the Protestant pastors was so good as 
to visit me: a young man, intelligent and polite, with whom I 
passed an hour or two in talk. Florae, he told me, is part 
Protestant, part Catholic; and the difference in religion is usually 
doubled by a difference in politics. You may judge of my sur- 
prise, coming as I did from such a babbling purgatorial Poland 
of a place as Monastier, when I learned that the population 
lived together on very quiet terms; and there was even an ex- 
change of hospitalities between households thus doubly sepa- 
rated. Black Camisard and White Camisard, militiaman and 
Miquelet ^ and dragoon, Protestant prophet and Catholic cadet 
of the White Cross, they had all been sabering and shooting, 
burning, pillaging, and murdering, their hearts hot with indig- 
nant passion; and here, after a hundred and seventy years, 
Protestant is still Protestant, Cathohc still Catholic, in mutual 
toleration and mild amity of life. But the race of man, like that 
indomitable nature whence it sprang, has medicating virtues of 
its own; the years and seasons bring various harvests; the sun 
returns after the rain; and mankind outlives secular animosities, 
as a single man awakens from the passions of a day. We judge 
our ancestors from a more divine position; and the dust being a 
little laid with several centuries, we can see both sides adorned 
with human virtues and fighting with a show of right. 

I have never thought it easy to be just, and find it daily even 
harder than I thought. I own I met these Protestants with de- 
light and a sense of coming home. I was accustomed to speak 
their language, in another and deeper sense of the word than that 
which distinguishes between French and English; for the true 
^ A soldier of the special guard in a Spanish province. 



IN THE VALLEY OF THE MIMENTE 20l 

babel is a divergence upon morals. And hence I could hold 
more free communication with the Protestants, and judge them 
more justly, than the Catholics. Father Apollinaris may pair 
off with my mountain Plymouth Brother as two guileless and 
devout old men; yet I ask myself if I had as ready a feeling for 
the virtues of the Trappist; or had I been a CathoHc, if I should 
have felt so warmly to the dissenter of La Vernede. With the 
first I was on terms of mere forbearance; but with the other, 
although only on a misunderstanding and by keeping on selected 
points, it was still possible to hold converse and exchange some 
honest thoughts. In this world of imperfection we gladly wel- 
come even partial intimacies. And if we find but one to whom 
we can speak out of our heart freely, with whom we can walk in 
love and simplicity without dissimulation, we have no ground of 
quarrel with the world or God. 



IN THE VALLEY OF THE MIMENTE 

ON Tuesday, ist October, we left Florae late in the afternoon, 
a tired donkey and tired donkey driver. A little way up 
the Tarnon, a covered bridge of wood introduced us into the 
valley of the Mimente. Steep rocky red mountains overhung 
the stream; great oaks and chestnuts grew upon the slopes or in 
stony terraces; here and there was a red field of millet or a few 
apple trees studded with red apples; and the road passed hard 
by two black hamlets, one with an old castle atop to please the 
heart of the tourist. 

It was difficult here again to find a spot fit for my encamp- 
ment. Even under the oaks and chestnuts the ground had not 
only a very rapid slope, but was heaped with loose stones; and 
where there was no timber the hills descended to the stream in a 
red precipice tufted with heather. The sun had left the highest 
peak in front of me, and the valley was full of the lowing sound 



202 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

of herdsmen's horns as they recalled the flocks into the stable, 
when I spied a bight ^ of meadow some way below the roadway 
in an angle of the river. Thither I descended, and, tying Modes- 
tine provisionally to a tree, proceeded to investigate the neigh- 
borhood. A gray pearly evening shadow filled the glen; objects 
at a little distance grew indistinct and melted bafflingly into 
each other; and the darkness was rising steadily like an exhala- 
tion. I approached a great oak which grew in the meadow, hard 
by the river's brink; when to my disgust the voices of children 
fell upon my ear, and I beheld a house round the angle on the 
other bank. I had half a mind to pack and be gone again, but 
the growing darkness moved me to remain. I had only to make 
no noise until the night was fairly come, and trust to the dawn 
to call me early in the morning. But it was hard to be annoyed 
by neighbors in such a great hotel. 

A hollow underneath the oak was my bed. Before I had fed 
Modestine and arranged my sack, three stars were already 
brightly shining, and the others were beginning dimly to appear. 
I slipped down to the river, which looked very black among its 
rocks, to fill my can; and dined with a good appetite in the dark, 
for I scrupled to light a lantern while so near a house. The 
moon, which I had seen, a pallid crescent, all afternoon, faintly 
illuminated the summit of the hills, but not a ray fell into the 
bottom of the glen where I was lying. The oak rose before me 
like a pillar of darkness; and overhead the heartsome stars were 
set in the face of night. No one knows the stars who has not 
slept, as the French happily put it, d la belle eloile} He may 
know all their names and distances and magnitudes, and yet be 
ignorant of what alone concerns mankind, their serene and 
gladsome influence on the mind. The greater part of poetry is 
about the stars; and very justly, for they are themselves the most 
classical of poets. These same far-away worlds, sprinkled like 
tapers or shaken together like a diamond dust upon the sky, had 
^ A bay-like segment of land. 2 Under the open sky. 



IN THE VALLEY OF THE MIMENTE 203 

looked not otherwise to Roland or Cavalier, when, in the words 
of the latter, they had ''no other tent but the sky, and no other 
bed than my mother earth." 

All night a strong wind blew up the valley, and the acorns fell 
pattering over me from the oak. Yet, on this first night of 
October", the air was as mild as May, and I slept with the fur 
thrown back. 

I was much disturbed by the barking of a dog, an animal that 
I fear more than any wolf. A dog is vastly braver, and is besides 
supported by the sense of duty. If you kill a wolf, you meet 
with encouragement and praise; but if you kill a dog, the sacred 
rights of property and the domestic affections come clamoring 
round you for redress. At the end of a fagging day, the sharp, 
cruel note of a dog's bark is in itself a keen annoyance; and to a 
tramp like myself, he represents the sedentary and respectable 
world in its most hostile form. There is something of the clergy- 
man or the lawyer about this engaging animal; and if he were 
not amenable to stones, the boldest man would shrink from 
traveling afoot. I respect dogs much in the domestic circle; but 
on the highway or sleeping afield, I both detest and fear them. 

I was wakened next morning (Wednesday, October 2d) by 
the same dog — for I knew his bark — making a .charge down 
the bank, and then, seeing me sit up, retreating again with great 
alacrity. The stars were not yet quite extinguished. The heaven 
was of that enchanting mild gray-blue of the early morn. A still 
clear light began to fall, and the trees on the hillside were out- 
lined sharply against the sky. The wind had veered more to the 
north, and no longer reached me in the glen; but as I was going 
on with my preparations, it drove a white cloud very swiftly 
over the hilltop ; and looking up, I was surprised to see the cloud 
dyed with gold. In these high regions of the air, the sun was 
already shining as at noon. If only the clouds traveled high 
enough, we should see the same thing all night long. For it is 
always daylight in the fields of space. 



204 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

As I began to go up the valley, a draft of wind came down it 
out of the seat of the sunrise, although the clouds continued to 
run overhead in an almost contrary direction. A few steps 
farther, and I saw a whole hillside gilded with the sun; and still 
a little beyond, between two peaks, a center of dazzling brilliancy 
appeared floating in the sky, and I was once more face to face 
with the big bonfire that occupies the kernel of our system. 

I met but one human being that forenoon, a dark military- 
looking wayfarer, who carried a game bag on a baldric; ^ but he 
made a remark that seems worthy of record. For when I asked 
him if he were Protestant or Catholic — 

''O," said he, "I make no shame of my religion. I am a 
Catholic." 

He made no shame of it! The phrase is a piece of natural 
statistics; for it is the language of one in a minority. I thought 
with a smile of Baville and his dragoons, and how you may ride 
roughshod over a religion for a century, and leave it only the 
more lively for the friction. Ireland is still Catholic; the Ce- 
vennes still Protestant. It is not a basketful of law papers, nor 
the hoofs and pistol butts of a regiment of horse, that can change 
one tittle of a plowman's thoughts. Outdoor rustic people have 
not many ideas, but such as they have are hardy plants and 
thrive flourishingly in persecution. One who has grown a long 
while in the sweat of laborious noons, and under the stars at 
night, a frequenter of hills and forests, an old honest country- 
man, has, in the end, a sense of communion with the powers of 
the universe, and amicable relations towards his God. Like my 
mountain Plymouth Brother, he knows the Lord. His religion 
does not repose upon a choice of logic; it is the poetry of the 
man's experience, the philosophy of the history of his Hfe. God, 
like a great power, like a great shining sun, has appeared to this 
simple fellow in the course of years, and become the ground and 
essence of his least reflections; and you may change creeds and 
^ A belt, usually worn over the shoulder. 



THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY 205 

dogmas by authority, or proclaim a new religion with the sound 
of trumpets, if you will; but here is a man who has his own 
thoughts, and will stubbornly adhere to them in good and evil. 
He is a Catholic, a Protestant, or a Plymouth Brother, in the 
same indefeasible sense that a man is not a woman, or a woman 
not a man. For he could not vary from his faith, unless he 
could eradicate all memory of the past, and, in a strict and not a 
conventional meaning, change his mind. 



THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY 

I WAS now drawing near to Cassagnas, a cluster of black 
roofs upon the hillside, in this wild valley, among chestnut 
gardens, and looked upon in the clear air by many rocky peaks. 
The road along the Mimente is yet new, nor have the mountain- 
eers recovered their surprise when the first cart arrived at Cas- 
sagnas. But although it lay thus apart from the current of 
men's business, this hamlet had already made a figure in the 
history of France. Hard by, in caverns of the mountain, was 
one of the five arsenals of the Camisards; where they laid up 
clothes and corn and arms against necessity, forged bayonets 
and sabers, and made themselves gunpowder with willow char- 
coal and saltpeter boiled in kettles. To the same caves, amid 
this multifarious industry, the sick and wounded were brought 
up to heal; and there they were visited by the two surgeons, 
Chabrier and Tavan, and secretly nursed by women of the 
neighborhood. 

Of the five legions into which the Camisards were divided, it 
was the oldest and the most obscure that had its magazines by 
Cassagnas. This was the band of Spirit Seguier; men who had 
joined their voices with his in the 68th Psalm as they marched 
down by night on the archpriest of the Cevennes. Seguier, 
promoted to heaven, was succeeded by Salomon Couderc, whom 



2o6 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

Cavalier treats in his memoirs as chaplain general to the whole 
army of the Camisards. He was a prophet; a great reader of the 
heart, who admitted people to the sacrament or refused them 
by "intentively viewing every man" between the eyes; and had 
the most of the Scriptures off by rote. And this was surely 
happy; since in a surprise in August, 1703, he lost his mule, his 
portfolios, and his Bible. It is only strange that they were not 
surprised more often and more effectually; for this legion of 
Cassagnas was truly patriarchal ^ in its theory of war, and 
camped without sentries, leaving that duty to the angels of the 
God for whom they fought. This is a token, not only of their 
faith, but of the trackless country where they harbored. M. de 
Caladon, taking a stroll one fine day, walked without warning 
into their midst, as he might have walked into '*a flock of sheep 
in a plain," and found some asleep and some awake and psalm- 
singing. A traitor had need of no recommendation to insinuate 
himself among their ranks, beyond "his faculty of singing 
psalms"; and even the prophet Salomon "took him into a 
particular friendship." Thus, among their intricate hills, the 
rustic troop subsisted; and history can attribute few exploits 
to them but sacraments and ecstasies. 

People of this tough and simple stock will not, as I have just 
been saying, prove variable in religion; nor will they get nearer 
to apostasy than a mere external conformity like that of Na- 
aman " in the house of Rimmon. When Louis XVI, in the words 
of the edict, "convinced by the uselessness of a century of perse- 
cutions, and rather from necessity than sympathy," granted at 
last a royal grace of toleration, Cassagnas was still Protestant; 
and to a man, it is so to this day. There is, indeed, one family 
that is not Protestant, but neither is it Catholic. It is that of a 
Catholic cure in revolt, who has taken to his bosom a school- 
mistress. And his conduct, it's worth noting, is disapproved by 
the Protestant villagers. 

^ Primitive. 



THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY 207 

"It is a bad idea for a man," said one, "to go back from his 
engagements." 

The villagers whom I saw seemed intelligent after a countrified 
fashion, and were all plain and dignified in manner. As a 
Protestant myself, I was well looked upon, and my acquaintance 
with history gained me further respect. For we had something 
not unlike a religious controversy at table, a gendarme and a 
merchant with whom I dined being both strangers to the place 
and Catholics. The young men of the house stood round and 
supported me; and the whole discussion was tolerantly con- 
ducted, and surprised a man brought up among the infinitesi- 
mal and contentious differences of Scotland. The merchant, 
indeed, grew a Httle warm, and was far less pleased than some 
others with my historical acquirements. But the gendarme 
was mighty easy over it all. 

" It's a bad i5ea for a man to change," said he; and the remark 
was generally applauded. 

That was not the opinion of the priest and soldier at our Lady 
of the Snows. But this is a different race; and perhaps the same 
great-heartedness that upheld them to resist, now enables them 
to differ in a kind spirit. For courage respects courage; but 
where a faith has been trodden out, we may look for a mean and 
narrow population. The true work of Bruce and Wallace " was 
the union of the nations; not that they should stand apart 
awhile longer, skirmishing upon their borders; but that, when 
the time came, they might unite with self-respect. 

The merchant was much interested in my journey, and 
thought it dangerous to sleep afield. 

"There are the wolves," said he; "and then it is known you 
are an Englishman. The English have always long purses, and 
it might very well enter into some one's head to deal you an ill 
blow some night." 

I told him I was not much afraid of such accidents; and at any 
rate judged it unwise to dwell upon alarms or consider small 



2o8 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

perils in the arrangement of life. Life itself, I submitted, was a 
far too risky business as a whole to make each additional particu- 
lar of danger worth regard. "Something," said I, ''might burst 
in your inside any day of the week, and there would be an end 
of you, if you were locked into your room with three turns of the 
key." 

''Cependant,'' said he, "coucher dehors/^' ^ 

"God," said I, "is everywhere." 

" Cependant, coucher dehors ! " he repeated, and his voice was 
eloquent of terror. 

He was the only person, in all my voyage, who saw anything 
hardy in so simple a proceeding; although many considered it 
superfluous. Only one, on the other hand, professed much de- 
light in the idea; and that was my Plymouth Brother, who cried 
out, when I told him I sometimes preferred sleeping under the 
stars to a close and noisy alehouse, "Now I see' that you know 
the Lord!" 

The merchant asked me for one of my cards as I was leaving, 
for he said I should be something to talk of in the future, and 
desired me to make a note of his request and reason; a desire 
with which I have thus complied. 

A little after two I struck across the Mimente, and took a 
rugged path southward up a hillside covered with loose stones 
and tufts of heather. At the top, as is the habit of the country, 
the path disappeared; and I left my she-ass munching heather, 
and went forward alone to seek a road. 

I was now on the separation of two vast watersheds; behind 
me all the streams were bound for the Garonne and the Western 
Ocean; before me was the basin of the Rhone. Hence, as from 
the Lozere, you can see in clear weather the shining of the Gulf 
of Lyons; and perhaps from here the soldiers of Salomon may 
have watched for the topsails of Sir Cloudesley Shovel," and the 
long-promised aid from England. You may take this ridge as 
1 "But, to sleep out of doors!" 



THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY 209 

lying in the heart of the country of the Camisards; four of the 
five legions camped all round it and almost within view — Salo- 
mon and Joani to the north, Castanet and Roland to the south; 
and when Julien had finished his famous work, the devastation 
of the High Cevennes, which lasted all through October and 
November, 1703, and during which four hundred and sixty 
villages and hamlets were, with fire and pickax, utterly sub- 
verted, a man standing on this eminence would have looked 
forth upon a silent, smokeless, and dispeopled land. Time and 
man's activity have now repaired these ruins; Cassagnas is once 
more roofed and sending up domestic smoke; and in the chestnut 
gardens, in low and leafy corners, many a prosperous farmer 
returns, when the day's work is done, to his children and bright 
hearth. And still it was perhaps the wildest view of all my 
journey. Peak upon peak, chain upon chain of hills ran surging 
southward, channeled and sculptured by the winter streams, 
feathered from head to foot with chestnuts, and here and there 
breaking out into a coronal of cliffs. The sun, which was still 
far from setting, sent a drift of misty gold across the hilltops, but 
the valleys were already plunged in a profound and quiet shadow. 
A very old shepherd, hobbling on a pair of sticks, and wearing 
a black cap of liberty, as if in honor of his nearness to the grave, 
directed me to the road for St. Germain de Calberte. There was 
something solemn in the isolation of this infirm and ancient 
creature. Where he dwelt, how he got upon this high ridge, or 
how he proposed to get down again, were more than I could 
fancy. Not far off upon my right was the famous Plan de Font 
Morte, where Poul with his Armenian saber slashed down the 
Camisards of Seguier. This, methought, might be some Rip 
van Winkle of the war, who had lost his comrades, fleeing before 
Poul, and wandered ever since upon the mountains. It might 
be news to him that Cavalier had surrendered, or Roland had 
fallen fighting with his back against an olive. And while I was 
thus working on my fancy, I heard him hailing in broken tones, 



2IO TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

and saw him waving me to come back with one of his two sticks. 
I had already got some way past him; but, leaving Modestine 
once more, retraced my steps. 

Alas, it was a very commonplace affair. The old gentleman 
had forgot to ask the peddler what he sold, and wished to remedy 
this neglect. 

I told him sternly, "Nothing." 

"Nothing?" cried he. ^ 

I repeated "Nothing," and made off. 

It's odd to think of, but perhaps I thus became as inexplicable 
to the old man as he had been to me. 

The road lay under chestnuts, and though I saw a hamlet or 
two below me in the vale, and many lone houses of the chestnut 
farmers, it was a very solitary march all afternoon; and the 
evening began early underneath the trees. But I heard the 
voice of a woman singing some sad, old, endless ballad not far 
off. It seemed to be about love and a bel amoureux, her hand- 
some sweetheart; and I wished I could have taken up the strain 
and answered her, as I went on upon my invisible woodland way, 
weaving, like Pippa in the poem," my own thoughts with hers. 
What could I have told her? Little enough; and yet all the 
heart requires. How the world gives and takes away, and brings 
sweethearts near, only to separate them again into distant and 
strange lands ; but to love is the great amulet ^ which makes the 
world a garden; and "hope, which comes to all," outwears the 
accidents of life, and reaches with tremulous hand beyond the 
grave and death. Easy to say: yea, but also, by God's mercy, 
both easy and grateful to believe! 

We struck at last into a wide white highroad, carpeted with 
noiseless dust. The night had come; the moon had been shining 
for a long while upon the opposite mountain; when on turning 
a corner my donkey and I issued ourselves into her light. I had 
emptied out my brandy at Florae, for I could bear the stuff no 

1 A charm. 



THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY 211 

longer, and replaced it with some generous and scented Volnay ; 
and now I drank to the moon's sacred majesty upon the road. 
It was but a couple of mouthfuls; yet I became thenceforth 
unconscious of my limbs, and my blood flowed with luxury. 
Even Modestine was inspired by this purified nocturnal sun- 
shine, and bestirred her little hoofs as to a livelier measure. 
The road wound and descended swiftly among masses of chest- 
nuts. Hot dust rose from our feet and flowed away. Our two 
shadows — mine deformed with the knapsack, hers comically 
bestridden by the pack — now lay before us clearly outlined on 
the road, and now, as we turned a corner, went off into the 
ghostly distance, and sailed along the mountain like clouds. 
From time to time a warm wind rustled down the valley, and 
set all the chestnuts dangling their bunches of foliage and fruit; 
the ear was filled with whispering music, and the shadows 
danced in tune. And next moment the breeze had gone by, and 
in all the valley nothing moved except our traveling feet. On 
the opposite slope, the monstrous ribs and gullies of the moun- 
tain were faintly designed in the moonshine ; and high overhead, 
in some lone house, there burned one lighted window, one square 
spark of red in the huge field of sad nocturnal coloring. 

At a certain point, as I went downward, turning many acute 
angles, the moon disappeared behind the hill ; and I pursued my 
way in great darkness, until another turning shot me without 
preparation into St. Germain de Calberte. The place was asleep 
and silent, and buried in opaque night. Only from a single open 
door, some lamplight escaped upon the road to show me that I 
was come among men's habitations. The two last gossips of the 
evening, still talking by a garden wall, directed me to the inn. 
The landlady was getting her chicks to bed; the fire was already 
out, and had, not without grumbling, to be fekindled; half an 
hour later, and I must have gone supperless. to roost. 



212 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 



THE LAST DAY 

WHEN I awoke (Thursday, 3d October), and, hearing a great 
flourishing of cocks and chuckling of contented hens, be- 
took me to the window of the clean and comfortable room where 
I had slept the night, I looked forth on a sunshiny morning in a 
deep vale of chestnut gardens. It was still early, and the cock 
crows, and the slanting lights, and the long shadows encouraged 
me to be out and look round me. 

St. Germain de Calberte is a great parish nine leagues round 
about. At the period of the wars, and immediately before the 
devastation, it was inhabited by two hundred and seventy-five 
families, of which only nine were Catholic; and it took the curi 
seventeen September days to go from house to house on horse- 
back for a census. But the place itself, although capital of a 
canton, is scarce larger than a hamlet. It lies terraced across a 
steep slope in the midst of mighty chestnuts. The Protestant 
chapel stands below upon a shoulder; in the midst of the town 
is the quaint old Catholic church. 

It was here that poor Du Chayla, the Christian martyr, kept 
his library and held a court of missionaries; here he had built 
his tomb, thinking to lie among a grateful population whom he 
had redeemed from error; and hither on the morrow of his death 
they brought the body, pierced with two-and-fifty wounds, to 
be interred. Clad in his priestly robes, he was laid out in state 
in the church. The cure, taking his text from Second Samuel, 
twentieth chapter and twelfth verse, "And Amasa wallowed in 
his blood in the highway," preached a rousing sermon, and 
exhorted his brethren to die each at his post, like their unhappy 
and illustrious superior. In the midst of this eloquence there 
came a breeze that Spirit Seguier was near at hand; and behold! 
all the assembly took to their horses' heels, some east, some 
west, and the cure himself as far as Alais. 



THE LAST DAY 213 

Strange was the position of this little Catholic metropolis, a 
thimbleful of Rome, in such a wild and contrary neighborhood. 
On the one hand, the legion of Salomon overlooked it from 
Cassagnas; on the other, it was cut off from assistance by the 
legion of Roland at Mialet. The cure, Louvrelenil, although he 
took a panic at the archpriest's funeral, and so hurriedly de- 
camped to Alais, stood well by his isolated pulpit, and thence 
uttered fulminations against the crimes of the Protestants. 
Salomon besieged the village for an hour and a half, but was 
beat back. The militiamen, on guard before the curt''s door, 
could be heard, in the black hours, singing Protestant psalms 
and holding friendly talk with the insurgents. And in the morn- 
ing, although not a shot had been fired, there would not be a 
round of powder in their flasks. Where was it gone? All 
handed over to the Camisards for a consideration. Untrusty 
guardians for an isolated priest! 

That these continual stirs were once busy in St. Germain de 
Calberte, the imagination with difl&culty receives; all is now so 
quiet, the pulse of human life now beats so low and still in this 
hamlet of the mountains. Boys followed me a great way off, like 
a timid sort of lion hunters; and people turned round to have a 
second look, or came out of their houses, as I went by. My 
passage was the first event, you would have fancied, since the 
Camisards, There was nothing rude or forward in this observa- 
tion; it was but a pleased and wondering scrutiny, like that of 
oxen or the human infant; yet it wearied my spirits, and soon 
drove me from the street. 

I took refuge on the terraces, which are here greenly carpeted 
with sward, and tried to imitate with a pencil the inimitable 
attitudes of the chestnuts as they bear up their canopy of leaves. 
Ever and again a little wind went by, and the nuts dropped all 
around me, with a light and dull sound, upon the sward. The 
noise was as of a thin fall of great hailstones; but there went with 
it a cheerful human sentiment of an approaching harvest and 



214 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

farmers rejoicing in their gains. Looking up, I could see the 
brown nut peering through the husk, which was already gaping; 
and between the stems the eye embraced an amphitheater of 
hill, sunlit and green with leaves. 

I have not often enjoyed a place more deeply. I moved in an 
atmosphere of pleasure, and felt light and quiet and content. 
But perhaps it was not the place alone that so disposed my spirit. 
Perhaps some one was thinking of me in another country; or 
perhaps some thought of my own had come and gone unnoticed, 
and yet done me good. For some thoughts, which sure would 
be the most beautiful, vanish before we can rightly scan their 
features; as though a god, traveling by our green highways, 
should but ope the door, give one smiling look into the house, 
and go again for ever. Was it Apollo, or Mercury, or Love^ 
with folded wings? Who shall say? But we go the lighter about 
our business, and feel peace and pleasure in our hearts. 

I dined with a pair of Catholics. They agreed in the con- 
demnation of a young man, a Catholic, who had married a 
Protestant girl and gone over to the religion of his wife. A 
Protestant born they could understand and respect; indeed they 
seemed to be of the mind of an old Catholic woman, who told 
me that same day there was no difference between the two sects, 
save that, ''wrong was more wrong for the Catholic," who had 
more light and guidance; but this of a man's desertion filled 
them with contempt. 

"It is a bad idea for a man to change," said one. 

It may have been accidental, but, you see how this phrase 
pursued me; and for myself, I believe it is the current philosophy 
in these parts. I have some difficulty in imagining a better. 
It's not only a great flight of confidence for a man to change his 
creed and go out of his family for heaven's sake; but the odds 
are — nay, and the hope is — that, with all this great transi- 
tion in the eyes of man, he has not changed himself a hair's 
breadth to the eyes of God. Honor to those who do so, for the 



THE LAST DAY 215 

wrench is sore. But it argues something narrow, whether of 
strength or weakness, whether of the prophet or the fool, in 
those who can take a sufficient interest in such infinitesimal and 
human operations, or who can quit a friendship for a doubtful 
process of the mind. And I think I should not leave my old 
creed for another, changing only words for other words; but 
by some brave reading, embrace it in spirit and truth, and find 
wrong as wrong for me as for the best of other communions. 

The phylloxera ^ was in the neighborhood; and instead of 
wine we drank at dinner a more economical juice of the grape — 
la Parisienne, they call it. It is made by putting the fruit whole 
into a cask with water; one by one the berries ferment and burst; 
what is drunk during the day is supplied at night in water; so, 
with ever another pitcher from the well, and ever another grape 
exploding and giving out its strength, one cask of Parisienne 
may last a family till spring. It is, as the reader will anticipate, 
a feeble beverage, but very pleasant to the taste. 

What with dinner and coffee, it was long past three before 
I left St. Germain de Calberte. I went down beside the Gardon 
of Mialet, a great glaring watercourse devoid of water, and 
through St. Etienne de Vallee Frangaise, or Val Francesque, 
as they used to call it; and towards evening began to ascend the 
hill of St. Pierre. It was a long and steep ascent. Behind me 
an empty carriage returning to St. Jean du Gard kept hard upon 
my tracks, and near the summit overtook me. The driver, 
like the rest of the world, was sure I was a peddler; but, unlike 
others, he was sure of what I had to sell. He had noticed the 
blue wool which hung out of my pack at either end; and from 
this he had decided, beyond my power to alter his decision, that 
I dealt in blue-w^ool collars, such as decorate the neck of the 
French draft horse. 

I had hurried to the topmost powers of Modestine, for I dearly 
desired to see the view upon the other side before the day had 
^ A genus of plant lice, destructive to grapevines. 



2l6 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

faded. But it was night when I reached the summit; the moon 
was riding high and clear; and only a few gray streaks of twilight 
lingered in the west. A yawning valley, gulfed in blackness, lay 
like a hole in created nature at my feet; but the outline of the 
hills was sharp against the sky. There was Mount Aigoal, the 
stronghold of Castanet. And Castanet, not only as an active 
undertaking leader, deserves some mention among Camisards; 
for there is a spray of rose among his laurel; and he showed how, 
even in a public tragedy, love will have its way. In the high 
tide of war he married, in his mountain citadel, a young and 
pretty lass called Mariette. There were great rejoicings; and 
the bridegroom released five-and-twenty prisoners in honor of 
the glad event. Seven months afterwards Mariette, the Princess 
of the Cevennes, as they called her in derision, fell into the hands 
of the authorities, where it was like to have gone hard with her. 
But Castanet was a man of execution, and loved his wife. He 
fell on Valleraugue, and got a lady there for a hostage; and for 
the first and last time in that war there was an exchange of pris- 
oners. Their daughter, pledge of some starry night upon 
Mount Aigoal, has left descendants to this day. 

Modestine and I — it was our last meal together — had a 
snack upon the top of St. Pierre, I on a heap of stones, she stand- 
ing by me in the moonlight and decorously eating bread out of 
my hand. The poor brute would eat more heartily in this man- 
ner; for she had a sort of affection for me, which I was soon to 
betray. 

It was a long descent upon St. Jean du Card, and we met 
no one but a carter, visible afar ofif by the glint of the moon on 
his extinguished lantern. 

Before ten o'clock we had got in and were at supper; fifteen 
miles and a stiff hill in little beyond six hours! 



FAREWELL, MODES TINE 217 



FAREWELL, MODESTINE 

ON examination, on the morning of October 4th, Modestine 
was pronounced unfit for travel. She would need at least 
two days' repose according to the ostler; but I was now eager 
to reach Alais for my letters; and, being in a civilized country 
of stagecoaches, I determined to sell my lady friend and be off 
by the diligence that afternoon. Our yesterday's march, with 
the testimony of the driver who had pursued us up the long hill 
of St. Pierre, spread a favorable notion of my donkey's capa- 
bilities. Intending purchasers were aware of an unrivaled op- 
portunity. Before ten I had an offer of twenty-five francs; and 
before noon, after a desperate engagement, I sold her, saddle and 
all, for five-and-thirty. The pecuniary gain is not obvious, but 
I had bought freedom into the bargain. 

St. Jean du Gard is a large place and largely Protestant. The 
maire, a Protestant, asked me to help him in a small matter 
which is itself characteristic of the country. The young women 
of the Cevennes profit by the common religion and the difference 
of the language to go largely as governesses into England; and 
here was one, a native of Mialet, struggling with English cir- 
culars from two different agencies in London. I gave what help 
I could; and volunteered some advice, which struck me as being 
excellent. 

One thing more I note. The phylloxera has ravaged the vine- 
yards in this neighborhood; and in the early morning, under 
some chestnuts by the river, I found a party of men working 
with a cider press. I could not at first make out what they 
were after, and asked one fellow to explain. 

" Making cider, " he said. " Out, c^est conifne qa. Comme dans 
lenordr'^ 

1 "Yes, it is like that. Just as in the north! " 



2l8 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

There was a ring of sarcasm in his voice: the country was 
going to the devil. 

It was not until I was fairly seated by the driver, and rattling 
through a rocky valley with dwarf olives, that I became aware 
of my bereavement. I had lost Modestine. Up to that moment 
I had thought I hated her; but now she was gone, 

"And, O, 
The difference to me!" " 

For twelve days we had been fast companions; we had traveled 
upwards of a hundred and twenty miles, crossed several re- 
spectable ridges, and jogged along with our six legs by many a 
rocky and many a boggy byroad. After the first day, although 
sometimes I was hurt and distant in manner, I still kept my 
patience; and as for her, poor soul! she had come to regard me 
as a god. She loved to eat out of my hand. She was patient, 
elegant in form, the color of an ideal mouse, and inimitably small. 
Her faults were those of her race and sex; her virtues were her 
own. Farewell, and if for ever — " 

Father Adam wept when he sold her to me; after I had sold 
her in my turn, I was tempted to follow his example; and being 
alone with a stage driver and four or five agreeable young men, 
I did not hesitate to yield to my emotion. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

It is not expected that the teacher shall follow, in his class, all the 
suggestions given here. 

Let the first reading be rapid and in the vacation spirit. When 
once the student is thoroughly interested in these vivid and varied 
stories, it should not be difficult for the teacher to lead him into a 
somewhat formal study of the elements of Stevenson's style and of 
the art which can so effectively cast a spell upon the reader. It is 
well for the teacher to imitate Stevenson in one thing: "He always 
had a contagious interest in the tale he was telling." The teacher 
will find that most pupils, after having read these journals of travel, 
will have a keen appetite for more of Stevenson. He may safely 
recommend to them Treasure Island, Kidnapped, David Balfour, 
Virginibus Puerisque, and A Child's Garden of Verses. These they 
can read with understanding, pleasure, and profit. 

I. Stevenson's Style and Method of Writing 

Words. — Perhaps the simplest and most definite point at which 
the student may begin the study of Stevenson's style is that of 
his language. Stevenson said in one of his essays that "the first 
merit which attracts in the pages of a good writer or the talk of a 
brilliant conversationalist is the choice and contrast of the words 
employed." Is this true of the language in An Inland Voyage and 
Travels with a Donkey? In examining the words used by Stevenson 
in these two books note particularly the following points: 

(a) Unusual words. Examples: so crank sl concern as a canoe, 
heady drums, bagman, trousered being, aspersion (of water), a brave 
caparison, corporalities, queasy, longevous, etc. Add other examples 
to the above list. Discuss his use of foreign words. 

219 



2 20 SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

(b) Colloquial words and phrases. Examples: four jolly miles, 
barnacled (spectacled), made shift to (as on page 21), rained smartly , 
crop-headed, took of (ceased), sorry fellows, pretty round with us, swipes, 
mighty spruce ajid shipshape, to rig up a peal of bells, faired up (of the 
weather), etc. To what extent are words of this kind employed? 
What effect do they have on the style? Should the student employ 
words of this kind in his own themes? 

(c) Specific and picturesque expressions. Take special pains to mark 
words and passages of this kind in reading these books. Some charac- 
teristic examples are: the road smoked in the twilight, stupefied with 
contentment, bickering windmill, a flibbertigibbet of a man, drenching 
plumps (of rain), leaves prattled in the wind, a church . . . splashed 
with gaudy lights from the windows, tittups (p. 116), an ironical snufify 
countenance. 

(d) Figures of speech. Examples: cynicism is the cold tub and'bath 
towel of the sentiments, a rude pistoling odor, a petard of a man, the 
river's swift and equable gallop, an amiable stripling of a river, the 
breath of rejoicing trees, the roofs for all their scrambli?ig did not attain 
above the knees of the cathedral, Modestine . . . a self-acting bedstead 
on four casters. Make lists of other examples of simile, of metaphor, 
or of personification. Are the figures used for poetic effect, for humor, 
or for emphasis? Stevenson frequently makes use of hyperbole; find 
examples of this. 

Sentence and paragraph structure. — Examine a number of 
pages chosen at random through the book and study the sentences as 
to their length (short, medium, or long), grammatical structure (sim- 
ple, complex, or compound), and rhetorical form (loose or periodic). 
What general conclusions can be drawn from this study? Does 
Stevenson use variety in his sentence structure? Note especially the 
qualities of euphony (pleasantness of sound) and rhythm (pleasing 
succession of accents). To appreciate these qualities the student 
should read aloud the chapter "A Night among the Pines." Find 
other passages with the same characteristics. 

Study the paragraphing in the chapters entitled "The Monks", 
" A Camp in the Dark ", "Across the Lozere ", and " Changed Times ". 
Is there a distinct topic for each paragraph? Are there topic sen- 
tences? Do the paragraphs have unity and coherence? Contrast 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 22i 

the typical paragraph in these chapters with that in the chap- 
ter ''The Boarders" or in the last part of "The Company at 
Table." 

Literary forms. — There are four types of discourse found in 
these two books by Stevenson. The basis of each is of course narra- 
tive. Within the narrative are found: (a) many descriptive passages, 
e. g., the Oise in Flood, the view from the Pic de Finiels, Noyon Cathe- 
dral; (b) brief conversations, e. g., the interview with peasants at 
Fouzilhac; (c) episodic narratives, which are either exciting incidents 
in the main story like the narrow escape from drowning, or inter- 
polated stories like that of the death of Du Chayla at the hands of 
the Camisards; and (d) numerous reflective passages in which the 
author gives us bits of his own philosophy and his view of life. It 
will be well for the student to make a fairly complete list of these last 
passages for particularly careful rereading. Note places in which 
each of the four types, description, conversation, episodic narration, 
reflection, is separately prominent. Note other places where two or 
more types are found in close combination. What use does Stevenson 
make of conversation? What are the qualities of his descriptive writ- 
ing? What may be said of Stevenson as a story-teller? Should these 
two books be classed as works of travel or as essays of the informal 
or personal type? 

Purpose and plan of the writing. — Examine carefully the title, 
table of contents, dedication, and preface of each of the books. 
Why should this always be done in reading a book? A good title 
should be short, appropriate, interesting. Do these titles meet such 
requirements? What is the purpose of the dedication? Why did 
Stevenson write these books? Did he have them in mind when he 
took the two journeys? According to what order or arrangement does 
the author take up the various thoughts presented in each book? 
Does he leave out or pass hurriedly over topics which should have 
fuller treatment? Does he make digressions from the main subject? 
Does he include material that is not relevant, not important, or not 
interesting? Are the chapter divisions properly made? Discuss the 
titles given to the various chapters. Would the narratives have been 
as well planned if all the events of a day had been included in one 
chapter? 



222 SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

Quotations and allusions. — Does Stevenson quote frequently 
from other writers? Does he quote exactly? What are allusions? 
Make a list of Stevenson's principal allusions to the Bible and explain 
each of them. Maker other lists of Hterary allusions; of historical and 
mythological allusions. 

Other qualities of style. — Among the subtler qualities of Steven- 
son's character and art exemplified in the Inland Voyage and Travels 
with a Donkey may be mentioned : 

(a) Poetic and imaginative power: For examples see pages 47-49, 
202-203: 

(b) Artistic sense, love of the beautiful: See pages 85, 148-149, 177, 
190. 

(c) Enthusiasm and optimism: See pages 60-62, 200-201, 214. 

(d) Humor: See pages 28-29, 123, 129-130, 218. Find other ex- 
amples of these qualities. Find other characteristics besides the four 
given above. 

11. Topics for Themes and Written Exercises 

I. Use material gained from the reading of the two books for themes 
on some of the following subjects: 

i; Getting acquainted with Modestine. 

2. Stevenson's equipment for his travels through the Cevennes. 

3. Father Adam. 

4. Stevenson's experiences with French inns and innkeepers. 

5. An experience on the Oise. 

6. The auberge at Bouchet St. Nicolas. 

7. Noyon Cathedral. 

8. A visit to a monastery. 

9. The Plymouth Brother. 

10. An informal call on a bargeman. 

11. The children Stevenson met. 

12. The Camisards. 

13. "What it is to be a peddler." 

14. Stevenson's Sundays. 

15. Chance meetings with odd people. 

16. The strolling players. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 223 

17. Du Chayla. 

18. A lunch in the rain. 

2. Write from your own experience, short essays on some of the 
following subjects. Try to secure somewhat the same effect that 
Stevenson secures in his writing. 

1. Sleeping out of doors. 

2. Walking expeditions. 

3. Sounds at night. 

4. Under the stars. 

5. A road by moonlight. 

6. A mountain stream. 

7. A country village at dusk. 

8. A tramp's view of dogs. 

9. "The tongue is the great divider." (See page 162.) 

10. "It is a bad idea for a man to change." (See page 207.) 

11. "We are all travelers with a donkey." (See page 119.) 

12. Peddlers. 

13. The society of trees. 

14. A sunrise. 

3. Themes on the following subjects will require some exercise of 
the student's critical powers: 

1. Stevenson's personality as revealed in the two books. 

2. Stevenson's likes and dislikes. 

3. Stevenson as a story-teller. 

4. A comparison of the two books. 

5. New ideas gained from the reading of Stevenson. 

6. Stevenson's attitude toward life. (Treat only one aspect in 

a single theme: his attitude toward work, books, society, 
love, or religion.) 

7. The best chapters in An Inland Voyage. 

4. Make an outline of each of the stories showing the days required 
for each journey and the principal events and the places visited each 
day. 

5. Read An Epilogue to an Inland Voyage in Stevenson's Across 
the Plains (reprinted in the Biographical Edition) and compare it 
with page 2^ oi An Inland Voyage. Write a theme about Stevenson's 
experiences with foreign passports. 



224 SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

6. Read the unfinished article by Stevenson, "A Mountain Town in 
France" (in Essays of Travel, Biographical Edition) and write a brief 
review or criticism of it. In the theme give your opinion as to why 
Stevenson altered his original plan of making this the first chapter in 
Travels with a Donkey. 

7. If you have read some of the books mentioned on page 219 or 
others by Stevenson write a short theme telling about your reading 
and giving your opinion of Stevenson's fife and work. Do not try to 
repeat what the editors and critics say but give your own sincere 
opinions. 

8. Write a short review or criticism of the two books in this volume. 
Include in the review your answers to some or all of the following 
questions : What is the general opinion of your classmates about these 
books? Are they as interesting to girls as to boys? Are they likely to 
be as interesting to the old as to the young? What things in the books 
do you like best and what least? Why? After reading them do you 
feel acquainted with the author? Would you have enjoyed meeting 
Stevenson personally? What are the benefits to you from the reading 
and study of this volume? 



NOTES 

(The numbers in heavy type refer to the pages.) 

II. To say truth. George Meredith's opinion of this book is in- 
teresting. In a letter to Stevenson written soon after An Inland Voy- 
age was pubUshed, he said: "The writing is of the rare kind which 
is naturally simple yet picked and choice. It is literature. . . . My 
protest is against the preface and the final page. The preface is 
keenly in Osric's vein. As for the closing page, it is rank recreancy; 
it is quite out of tone with the rest of the book." Caleb and Joshua. 
See Numbers, XIII, 23. 

13. Sir Walter Grindlay Simpson, Bart. (Baronet.) Stevenson's 
companion on this voyage. The two were very different in tempera- 
ment but alike in their love for canoeing and tramping. Cigarette. 
The name of Sir Walter's canoe, which Stevenson jocosely apphes to 
Sir Walter himself. Arethusa. Stevenson's canoe. See a handbook 
of mythology concerning the wood nymph Arethusa. we projected 
the possession of a canal barge. See Scribner's Magazine, Septem- 
ber, 1908, for an amusing account of this project. The year following 
their canoe trip, Stevenson and Simpson bought a barge and fitted it 
up to carry out their plan for a journey along the canals and rivers of 
France. Because of financial difficulties, the scheme was abandoned 
and the barge and the canoes were sold. Eleven Thousand Virgins 
of Cologne. This refers to the legend of the slaughter of eleven thou- 
sand maidens by the Huns, a.nd the preservation of their bones in 
the church of St. Ursula, Cologne. 

15. tied my sheet. The sheet is the rope at the lower corner of the 
sail to extend it or remove it. SaiHng a canoe is so difficult that a 
careful sailor keeps the sheet in his hand; he invites danger by 
tying it. 

17. swept and garnished. A Biblical phrase. See Matthew, Xll, 
44. barnacled. Barnacles are shellfish which cHng to the hulls of 

225 



226 NOTES 

vessels. The spectacles on the faces of the young men remind the 

author of barnacles upon the hull of a vessel. 

1 8. Miss Howe or Miss Harlowe. Two intimate friends in Rich- 
ardson's novel, Clarissa Harlowe. divine huntress. Diana, who hunt- 
ed the woods at night attended by her nymphs, "the sHm and lovely 
maidens." Anthony. St. Anthony (251-356), an Egyptian saint 
who was tempted by the devil in the form of a beautiful woman. 

21. beating off a lee shore. The lee side of a vessel is the side shel- 
tered from the wind. If a barge was driven upon a lee shore, it would 
try to sail into the wind to escape shipwreck, like a squire's avenue. 
Like the road, lined with trees, leading up to the mansion of a country 
squire. Etna cooking apparatus. A vessel for heating liquids; it 
consists of a cup fixed in a saucer in which alcohol is burned, canoe 
aprons. Each canoeist wore a rubber apron spread so as to keep 
water out of the boat. 

23. AUee Verte. A double avenue of lime trees extending along 
the banks of the Willebroek canal from Brussels to Laeken. 

24. French Huguenots. French Protestants; they were so bit- 
terly persecuted at home in the time of Louis XIV, that thousands 
of them sought refuge in England. 

26. Mammon. The personification of avarice and worldliness. 
See Paradise Lost, Book I, 678-683. prophets were unpopular. See 
Matthew, XIII, 57. Stevenson would suggest that the Judean prophets 
were unpopular because they wearied the people by their enthusiastic 
and exhausting preaching. 

27. Apollo. A Greek myth says that Apollo's son, Phaethon, tried 
to take his father's place as driver of the chariot of the sun; he drove 
so close to earth that he came near consuming everything with fire. 
billows had gone over our head. See Psalms, XLII, 7. 

28. Wherever he journeys, etc. Stevenson here describes actual 
experiences which he had had. from China to Peru. A familiar 
quotation from Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes. 

29. I too have been knoUed to church. See As You Like It, II, 
vii, 1 19-124. I might come from any part of the globe. Ste- 
venson was so "cosmopolitan" in his appearance that he was sel- 
dom taken for a Scotsman. 

31. to the Indies after Drake. Sir Francis Drake (i 540-1 596) 



NOTES 227 

made two voyages to the West Indies. He was the first Englishman 
to circumnavigate the globe, sit squarest on a three-legged stool. 
Stevenson despised the confinement and drudgery of an office clerk. 

33. middle distance. A technical term in landscape painting; the 
part of a picture which is between the distance and the foreground. 

37. Bluebeards. Bluebeard, a famous character in nursery Ktera- 
ture, is noted for his cruelty to his wives, guided Jove. See the story 
of Baucis and Philemon in Greek mythology. 

40. the Lucretian maxim. Lucretius was a Roman philosopher 
and poet of the first century B. C. One of his maxims was: ''We find 
our bread sweeter when we know that others have less than we." 

41. the lilies and the skylarks. Examples of the special care of 
Providence. See Matthew VI, 26, 28-29. 

42. the lackeys in Moliere's farce. The reference is to scene XIV 
of Les Precieuses Ridicules, flibbertigibbet. An impulsive, restless, 
flighty person; formerly a busy imp or fiend. See King Lear, III, iv, 
120. masculine gender. In French grammar, adjectives are inflected 
to agree with nouns in gender. One of the proofs that the peddler 
had lacked the "favors of education" was that he gave all his ad- 
jectives, without distinction, the masculine form, fancy futures. He 
likewise took liberties with grammatical usage in constructing the 
future tenses of his verbs. 

46. Waterloo crackers. Firecrackers named for Waterloo in Bel- 
gium, the place of the great victory over Napoleon in 181 5. Austerlitz. 
A town in Austria where Napoleon defeated an army of Austrians and 
Russians in 1805. Waterloo bridge. A bridge over the Thames in 
London. 

47. entertained angels unawares. See Genesis XVIII, for the 
story of Abraham's entertaining three angels. The phrase comes 
from Hebrews XIII, 2. 

48. Heine. Heinrich Heine (i 797-1 856), a noted German poet and 
critic, whose account, in his Harzreise, of a walking trip through the 
Harz Mountains is very like Stevenson's stories of travel. Merlin 
under the oaks of Broceliande. Merhn was the enchanter of King 
Arthur's court and was beguiled of the secret of his magic by Vivien, 
the evil woman of the court. She used the new-learned charm on 
him, and left him under an everlasting spell in a hollow oak in the 



228 NOTES 

forest of Broceliande. See Tennyson's "Merlin and Vivien" in Idylls 
of the King, a banyan grove. The banyan is a tree of India which 
sends out aerial roots that grow down to the ground and make addi- 
tional trunks. A tree may so extend its branches and supporting stems 
as to afford shelter for thousands of people. Its name comes from the 
fact that the sheltered space is often used by the native merchant or 
"banian." 

50. corks, (a) A game played with corks colored differently on the 
sides, and so trimmed that they may fall either way. (b) In France 
and Belgium, a game which is a mixture of quoits and bowls, bedlam- 
ite. Insane. The weather was so boisterous as to appear insane. 
Bedlam is a corruption of the word Bethlehem. The name was apphed 
to the hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem in London, which was founded 
as a priory in 1247, and used as a hospital for lunatics as early as 1402. 

51. Hebrew prophets. See the story of Balaam and his ass, Num- 
bers, XXII, 21-35. Balaam was presumptuous in answering to Balak's 
call contrary to the divine command, and in assuming that the ass 
was as blind as he. Alma and Spicheren. Alma is a river in the 
Crimea where the British, French, and Turkish forces won a victory 
over the Russians in the Crimean war, 1854. Spicheren is a village in 
German Lorraine where the Germans defeated the French in the 
Franco-Prussian war, 1870. 

54. Archangel. A town in the north of Russia which exports tar. 
Loch Carron. A lake, or an inlet of the ocean, on the west coast of 
Scotland, well known to Stevenson. 

55. had projected an old age. See the Dedication, page 13, for 
the plan referred to. progresses. A jocose reference to their going 
forward as if it were a journey of royalty. 

56. Duke of Westminster. One of the wealthy landlords of 
London. 

58. Mr. Moens. An English writer on travel and historical sub- 
jects, who had made a journey along the rivers and canals of France 
and Belgium. 

59. taking sanctuary. Taking refuge in a place, such as a church, 
to be secure against punishment or violence. The "cities of refuge" 
among the Hebrews, and certain churches set apart by Christians in 
Ihe Middle Ages, are examples of such places. Pan. The Greek god 



NOTES 229 

of pastures, flocks, shepherds, forests, and their wild life; he used a 
musical instrument made of reeds. 

61. the Mountain Daisy. See Burns's poem. To a Mountain Daisy. 
"Come away, Death". A song sung by Feste for Duke Orsino in 
Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. See Act II, scene iv, for the song and 
for Duke Orsino 's reference to "the spinners and the young maids." 
lUyria. The imaginary country where the action of Twelfth Night 
takes place. 

65. Fontainebleau. A beautiful forest near Paris; a favorite resort 
for artists. Stevenson spent much time in Barbizon and Grez, two 
villages on the edge of the forest. Alsace and Lorraine. Districts 
ceded to Germany by France at the close of the Franco-Prussian war, 
1 870-1 87 1. Empire. The second empire, under Napoleon III; it was 
responsible for the conduct of the war, which ended in the defeat of 
France, and it was succeeded by the third republic in 187 1. Farmer 
George. George III, through whose blundering obstinacy Great 
Britain lost the American colonies. He was farmer-like in his dress, 
manners, and tastes, and actually conducted a little farm near Wind- 
sor. 

66. passed under the Caudine Forks. The poet had suffered hu- 
miliation equal to that of the Roman soldiers who were compelled to 
pass under the yoke by the Samnites who had defeated them at the 
battle of the Caudine Forks, 321, B. C. Fletcher of Saltoun. A 
Scotch political writer and patriot who wrote the famous lines: "I 
knew a very wise man who believed that if a man were permitted to 
make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a na- 
tion." Paul Deroulede. A French author and politician whose plays 

, and poems are filled with love for France and hatred for Germany. 

67. It was Othello over again. Othello, in Shakespeare's play 
Othello, defends himself before the Venetian senators from the charge 
of having won the love of Desdemona through witchcraft, and declares, 
"She loved me for the dangers I had passed." 

68. selvage. The edge of a woven fabric. The wide border of the 
roadway suggests the word. 

69. the seventh heaven. Many ancient Hebrews believed in a 
plurality of heavens; the seventh, or the "heaven of heavens," was 
the abode of God and the most exalted spirits. 



230 NOTES 

70. hair flourishing like Samson's. Samson was a noted 
champion of Israel whose supernatural strength depended upon his 
keeping his Nazarite vow, one part of which was that his locks should 
be unshorn. See /w^/^e^ XIII-XVI. Gaston Lafenestre. A French 
painter born in 184 1, with whom Stevenson was acquainted. 

71. Jacques. Charles Emile Jacques, a French painter of land- 
scapes and animals. National Gallery. The great London picture 
gallery founded in 18 14. Precious in the sight of the Lord, etc. See 
Psalms CXVI, 15. 

73. Reasons are as plentiful as blackberries. See Shakespeare's 
Henry IV, Part I, Act II, iv, 265. 

74. Inquisition. An ecclesiastical court established in the early 
thirteenth century for the detection and punishment of heresy. The 
Spanish Inquisition, under the control of the state, was organized 
at the end of the fifteenth century and became notorious for its 
cruelty. Poe's horrid story. The Pit mid the Pendulum. Tristram 
Shandy. A famous English novel by Laurence Sterne (i 713-1768). 
The sermon referred to is found in Book II, chap. XVII. The horrors 
of the Inquisition are described to show that there may be such a 
thing as reHgion without mercy. Stevenson means to convey the idea 
that his sources of information about the Inquisition may not have 
been impartial. 

75. Nanty Ewart. The captain of the smuggler's boat in Scott's 
Red Gauntlet. Communist. One who believes that members of the 
social organization should hold goods in common. Communard. 
One who supported the commune of Paris in 187 1, or one who ad- 
vocated government by independent municipalities. 

77. Diana. The goddess of maiden modesty. Venus. The god- . 
dess of love and beauty. 

79. hecatomb. The sacrifice of a hundred oxen or other beasts at 
one time; the sacrifice of any large number of victims. La Fere, A 
town on the Oise taken by the Germans in 1870. Niirnberg figures. 
Little statues made at Nurnberg, a famous old city of Bavaria. 

82. set the temple of Diana on fire. Reference is here made to 
the recklessness of Herostratus (356 B. C.) who, for the sake of noto- 
riety, set the temple of Diana at Ephesus on fire. 

83. Timon. An Athenian misanthrope of the fifth century B. C, 



NOTES 231 

and the cynical hero of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens. A philan- 
thropist at first, he later lost faith in mankind and was filled with 
immense disgust toward all men. 

84. Zola. A distinguished French novelist (i 840-1 902). For the 
description referred to, see VAssojnmoir, chap. 3. 

87. " Put off thy shoes," etc. See Exodus III, 5. 

88. Miserere. A musical setting of the 51st Psalm used in the 
Roman CathoHc service; so named because of its first word in the 
Latin. 

90. Jubilate Deo. "Rejoice in the Lord"; a chant used in the 
Episcopal and Roman services; the looth Psalm. Ave Maria, era 
pro nobis. "Hail Mary, pray for us;" a Latin hymn to the Virgin. 

92. halcyon. Calm, peaceful. Legend says that there are fourteen 
days of tranquil weather when the halcyon (the kingfisher) is nesting 
at sea. 

94. Gothic insecurity. Apparently more attention had been given 
to ornament than to strength in the architectural design, gargoyled. 
Decorated with gargoyles, the heads of beasts or serpents into which 
the projections of the waterspouts are fantastically carved. Louis 
XIL King of France, 1498-15 15. 

95. Via Dolorosa. The Dolorous Way; the road at Jerusalem 
leading to Golgotha, along which Jesus passed on his way to be 
crucified. 

98. feuilletons. That part of a French newspaper which is de- 
voted to light literature, criticisms, etc. Here the word refers to the 
articles themselves. 

99. Walt Whitman. An American poet (1819-1892) of originality 
and force who was admired by Stevenson. 

100. beasts that perish. See Psalms XLIX, 12. 

loi. Nirvana. The final absorption of the human soul into the 
infinite spirit with consequent extinction of personaHty; a state which 
the Buddhists beheve to be one of supreme happiness. Buddhists. 
Followers of Buddha, a deified Oriental religious teacher who lived 
about the fifth century, B. C. 

104. ex voto. As an offering made in fulfillment of a vow, or in 
token of a prayer for protection or for some favor. 

106. Indulgences. Absolution from censures and pubHc penances 



232 NOTES 

of the church; the relaxation for an individual of some requirement of 
the church, the exciseman. In his last days Robert Burns held the 
office of public exciseman, or collector of revenues from liquors. 
Euclid. The first great geometer, who lived about 300 B. C. 

no. ** We are not cotton-spinners all.'* See Tennyson's poem, 
The Third of February, 1852, stanza 8. " 'Tis better to have loved 
and lost." See Tennyson's In Memoriam, XXVII. 

III. Endymion. A young shepherd with whom Diana fell in love. 
She visited him while he slept, but he did not see her except with sleep- 
dimmed eyes. The dream-vision, however, aroused an inextinguish- 
able passion in his heart, which always exalted him. Audrey. A 
simple-minded, uninspiring country wench in Shakespeare's As You 
Like It. Even though Endymion should sink himself to her level, 
he could not efface "the vision and the dream" of the past. 

113. Chatelet. A well-known Parisian theater. 

1 14. Apollo. The Greek god of the sun and the patron of the fine 
arts. 

115. Muses. The nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, who 
preside over music, poetry, science, and art. Pyramus and Thisbe. 
See Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book IV, for an account of the myth. The 
version presented by the "hempen homespuns" in Shakespeare's 
Midsummer Nighfs Dream is evidently more cheerful and diverting 
than the one given by M. de Vauversin. the unities. The dramatic 
unities required by classic rules and made familiar by Aristotle are 
unity of time, unity of place, and unity of action. The time must 
be limited to one day, the places of the scenes must be within a day's 
travel of each other, and the action must be limited to a single theme. 

116. the Abstract Bagman. The typical commercial traveler, 
blind to the beauty of the world. Theophile Gautier. French poet, 
novelist, and critic. He was identified with the romantic movement 
in France. 

119. Sidney Colvin. An English critic and essayist who was for 
years Stevenson's close friend. John Bunyan. (1628-1688.) The 
author of The Pilgrim's Progress. 

121. Le Monastier. Stevenson's essay, A Mountain Town in 
France, was first written as the opening chapter of this book. Legiti- 
mists. They supported the descendants of the old line of Bourbon 



NOTES 233 

kings; the Orleanists favored the descendants of the Duke of Orleans; 
the Imperialists wanted to restore the Empire under the son of Louis 
Napoleon; and the Republicans wanted to preserve the Republic 
established after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-187 1. Poland. 
Poland has been noted for its political dissensions. Babylon. The 
ancient city of Babylon was reputed to be full of tumult and confusion. 
Cevennes. A range of mountains in southern France. 

123. respirator. A device worn over the nose or mouth to moder- 
ate or sift the air. 

125. Christian. The hero in Bunyan's The Pilgrim^ s Progress. 

126. as an ox goeth to the slaughter. See Proverbs, VII, 22. 

128. deus ex machina. "The god (let down) from the machine." 
An expression drawn from the classic drama and referring to a stage 
contrivance by which a god is made to appear on the scene and disen- 
tangle a complication which could not be relieved in any natural way. 
Here the phrase refers to the peasant who had given assistance, 
countryman of the Sabbath. Observance of the Sabbath is so strict 
in Scotland that Stevenson calls that country the home or the native 
place of the Sabbath. 

129. Cyclops. A race of one-eyed giants dwelling in Sicily, with 
Polyphemus, their chief. He lived alone in a cave, keeping his flocks. 
See Homer's Odyssey, Book IX. like a sucking dove. See Shakes- 
peare's Midsummer Night's Dream, I, ii, 84. Bottom promises to 
roar thus mellifluously if allowed to play the part of the lion. 

130. hypothec. A term in Scots law meaning a pledge of goods as 
security for a debt, where the property pledged remains in possession 
of the debtor. Here it means simply "the whole outfit." 

135. ruled the roast. That is, exercised leadership. More often 
written "ruled the roost." 

139. Alexander Pope. An English poet (1688-1744). Pope has 
no such line. Stevenson doubtless had in mind Dr. Isaac Watts's 
lines on "False Greatness" in Book II, of his HorcB Lyricce: 

"Were I so tall to reach the pole, 

Or grasp the ocean with my span, 
I must be measured by my soul: 

The mind's the standard of the man." 



234 NOTES 

Dr. Watts, a man of short stature, would serve for an illustration as 
well as Pope, who was dwarfed and crippled, the little corporal. A 
nickname for Napoleon. Stevenson would have us understand that 
stature in men and wolves is not the measure of their power. 

141. Herbert Spencer. An Enghsh rational philosopher (1820- 
1903). Stevenson thinks that a person famihar with Spencer's phi- 
losophy should be free from superstitious belief in ghosts and fairies. 

143. "a little farther lend thy guiding hand." The initial line 
of Milton's Samson Agonistes is: "A little onward lend thy guiding 
hand." 

145. Filia barbara pater barbarior. "Father more barbarous 
than thy barbarous daughter." A parody on a line from Horace. 

148. Pastors of the Desert. A history of the Protestant revolt of 
the eighteenth century in France. Ulysses. See Book XIII of 
Homer's Odyssey for an account of the return of Ulysses to his island 
kingdom. 

150. Lady of all Graces. The Virgin Mary. What went ye 
out for to see? Matthew, XI, 8. Balquidder and Dunrossness. 
Remote Protestant parishes in West Perthshire, Scotland, and in the 
Shetland Islands respectively. 

151. I saw the end of the fable. The fable referred to is, "The 
Miller, his Son, and the Ass." It is not one of ^Esop's fables, neither 
should it be accredited to La Fontaine, although it is found in the 
third book of his volume of fables. 

153. Matthew Arnold. An English poet and critic. The quota- 
tion is from stanza 11 of his poem, The Grande Chartreuse. 

154. ** Mountains and vales and floods," etc. This is quoted 
from a sonnet written by Wordsworth in 1844, as a protest against the 
desecration of the English Lake region by railroad building. Trap- 
pist. The Trappists are a monastic body named from the abbey of 
La Trappe in France. The rules of their order enjoin abstinence, 
silence, and severe labor. 

155. sheets of characters. Pictures sold in sheets and represent- 
ing characters in a series of dramatic scenes. See Stevenson's 
Memories and Portraits: "A Penny Plain and Twopence Colored." 
Marco Sadeler. A Flemish engraver and publisher of prints. 

157. Dr. Pusey. Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-188 2) was the 



NOTES 235 

leader of the Tractarian movement, a reaction in the churcn of Eng- 
land toward Catholicism. John Henry Newman, his associate in the 
movement, left the English church and later became a Roman Cath- 
ohc Cardinal, and it was thought that Dr. Pusey, too, would be con- 
verted to the Roman Cathohc faith. Father Hospitaler. In a 
religious house, the monk whose duty it is to receive and attend upon 
strangers. 

159. MM. les retraitants. "Gentlemen in retreat"; those who 
enter the monastery for a limited period of meditation and prayer. 
Imitation. The Imitation of Christ, a book of religious reflection, said 
to have been written by Thomas a Kempis, a German monk (1380- 
1471). Elizabeth Seton. An American philanthropist (1774-1821) 
who left the Protestant for the Roman CathoHc church, founded the 
Sisters of Charity in the United States, and became its first Mother 
Superior. Cotton Mather. A Puritan divine (1663-17 28) of Boston 
who had been the spiritual guide of the people in whose evangeliza- 
tion Ehzabeth Seton was interested. 

160. breviaries. Books containing the daily service of the Roman 
Catholic church. Veuillot. A French author of controversial works 
favorable to the Roman Catholic church. Chateaubriand. A French 
statesman and author who was converted to the Roman Catholic 
faith. Odes et Ballades. A collection of poems by Victor Hugo, the 
French poet and novelist. Moliere. The greatest writer of French 
comedy of the seventeenth century, fathers. The theological writers 
of the early Christian church. 

162. Cistercian rule. Referring to the strict code of an old order 
of monks and nuns. 

163. has an office to sing. Must chant the service. 

164. " Que fas de belles filles," etc. 

"What beautiful daughters you have, 
Girofle, Girofla! 
What beautiful daughters you have, 
Love will take count of them!" 

166. red ribbon of a decoration. The emblem of the Legion of 
Honor, conferred for heroic achievement. Carthage. Internal strife 
weakened Carthage and made possible its destruction by Rome. 



236 NOTES 

Gambetta. A French statesman, the most influential leader in the 
Republic which was established after the Franco-Prussian war. 

168. Gaetulian lion. GaetuHa was a region of northern Africa. 
See Horace, Carm. I, XXIII, 9 and 10: "But I am not seeking thee 
to destroy thee hke a fierce tiger or GaetuHan lion." 

173. feyness. There is a Scotch superstition that one who is fated 
to die is visited by a presentiment of his doom in the form of a mild 
madness or "feyness." Stevenson declares his belief in moderate 
degrees of "feyness" which prophesy only perverse and foolish 
behavior. 

174. "In a more sacred or sequestered bower," etc. Milton's 
description of the bridal bower of Adam and Eve. See Paradise Lost, 
Book IV, 70s ff. 

175. Montaigne. A celebrated French essayist (1533-1592). 
Bastille. A famous prison in Paris torn down by the mob at the 
beginning of the French Revolution. 

179. W. P. Bannatyne. This is a fictitious name. Stevenson 
wrote the lines himself. 

180. "like stout Cortez," etc. See Keats's sonnet, Ow FzV^/ Loo;^- 
ing Into Chapman's Homer, the Grand Monarch. Louis XIV. 
(1643-1715). 

i8i. Camisards. French Protestants of the Cevennes who revolted 
against religious persecution in 1702. The name comes from the white 
blouse their soldiers wore over their armor in night forays. Jersey. 
An island in the English Channel near the coast of France. 

182. Florentin. Roman Catholic opponents of the Camisards, 
named from the town of St. Florent. 

184. Carlisle. A town in northern England. Dumfries. A town 
in southern Scotland. 

185. slew their Archbishop Sharpe. James Sharpe, Archbishop of 
St. Andrews, assisted Charles I and Archbishop Laud in their attempt 
to impose forms of worship and of church government upon the Scotch 
Covenanters, who looked upon him as a traitor and a tyrant, and 
assassinated him. In like manner the Camisards disposed of their 
chief persecutor, Du Chayla. 

186. Marshal Villars. The French leader who, in 1704, subdued 
the Camisards. rowing in the galleys. From ancient times convicts 



NOTES 237 

have been punished by being required to labor at the oars of galleys, 
seagoing vessels propelled by oars. Lamoignon de Baville. "A 
crafty and cold-bloodedly cruel politician, without the excuse of any 
zealous religious convictions" — Guizot. 

188. Scavenger's Daughter. An instrument of torture, consisting 
of a broad iron hoop into which the victim was put and squeezed to 
death. The name is a corruption of the name of the inventor, Sir 
William Skevington. Baal. The principal deity of the ancient 
Canaanites. 

190. Elilliecraiikie. A pass in Perthshire, Scotland. 

192. Joani and Salomon were leaders of the Camisards, Antony 
Watteau. A French painter (1684-1721) of scenes representing con- 
ventional pastoral life. 

196. Moravians. A Christian sect originating in Moravia in the 
fifteenth century; founded by the disciples of JohnHuss. Derbists. 
A sect originating in Plymouth, England, under the leadership of 
John Darby. They are also called Plymouth Brethren. Christian 
and Faithful. See Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress: "They went 
very lovingly on together, and had sweet discourse of all things that 
happened to them in their pilgrimage." 

198. a horrific country after the heart of Byron. The poet 
Byron was fond of describing the wild, awe-inspiring aspects of 
natural scenery. 

199. subprefecture. A small political division in France under 
the charge of an administrative officer called a subprefect. The word 
"subprefecture" is used both for the office and for the building devoted 
to the business of the office. Mauchline, Cumnock, or Carsphairn. 
Villages in Scotland. Prophet Peden. Alexander Peden (1628-1686) 
was the most famed and revered preacher of the Scotch Covenanters, 
and was reputed to have supernatural gifts. 

206. Naaman. See II Kings, V, 17-18. When Naaman, the 
captain of the hosts of Syria, had been cured of his leprosy by the 
prophet Elisha, he declared his allegiance to Jehovah, and promised 
that he would worship idols no longer. He said that it would be 
necessary for him to attend his master when he went into the temple 
of the Syrian god, Rimmon, but that he wished to be forgiven for 
this apparent deference to Rimmon. 



238 NOTES 

207. Bruce and Wallace. Scotland's most famous and best 
loved patriots and heroes. They successfully resisted the claims of 
Edward I and Edward II of England to the sovereignty of Scotland. 

208. Sir Cloudesley Shovel. He was bringing aid from England 
for the Camisards on one occasion, but receiving no answer to the 
signals which he made from his ships, he withdrew. 

210. like Pippa in the poem. See Robert Browning's poem, Pippa 
Passes. Pippa, the little silk-winding girl, having but one holiday in 
the year, plans to enjoy it by fancying herself in the place of each of 
the four most fortunate people in Asolo. She passes by their homes 
singing and her songs determine the fate of each of the four, who at 
that particular moment is passing through a grave crisis in his life. 

214. Apollo, or Mercury, or Love. That is, a message of light 
and life, or of business, or of abiding joy. 

218. "And, O, the difference to me I" Stevenson makes jocose 
use of these concluding lines from Wordsworth's poem "She Dwelt 
among the Untrodden Ways," in which the poet mourns the loss of 
Lucy. Farewell, and if for ever — . In the same playful manner 
he uses this line from Byron's poem, Fare Thee Well. 



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